


What He Wants

by vieralynn (sarasa_cat)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Deconstruction, Dragon Age Kink Meme, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Falling In Love, Family Drama, Gender Roles, Heterosexual Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Insecurity, Lyrium Addiction, Magical Realism, Masturbation, Nightmares, POV Third Person Limited, PTSD, Parenthood, Psychological Trauma, Religion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Romance, Sexual Fantasy, Subtext, Trope Subversion/Inversion, Unplanned Pregnancy, Unreliable Narrator, nothing goes as planned, wielding the giant symbolism hammer unironically
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-04 11:13:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarasa_cat/pseuds/vieralynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Apostate Marian Hawke hides an unintentional pregnancy from the templar father, Kirkwall’s Knight Captain, a man quite different from herself. After Hawke gives birth, Cullen attempts to reconcile. (Originally inspired by a Dragon Age Kink Meme prompt.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written the Dragon Age Kink Meme in response to [this prompt](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/9730.html?thread=39577090&).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen shouldn't think about Hawke, yet he does and he knows he is wrong to think of her because she is a mage. (Occurs in 9:31 during DA2's Act 1)

  **CHAPTER 1**

Cullen sleeps with the glow lamp left on beside his bed. Cullen doesn’t sleep. He drifts from counting rows of tiny dimples on the plaster wall just beside his head to a carnival’s cacophony of images. One minute he’s laughing with men he thinks of as brothers. In the next, bulbous flesh ripples out from the stone walls, ballooning around him. These monsters loom larger than their shadows. So Cullen runs. He runs up the stone stairs in the center of the tower, chased by what had once been a mage but is now an assemblage of gruesome body parts ripped inside out. Cullen runs without his armor or his sword, his bare feet slapping the stone steps, spiraling upward until he stumbles. He stumbles again. His foot slips on the next step. He falls, dropping down through the center of the tower, down into the darkness, falling too fast to gulp the air rushing past him. Just before he crashes into the tower’s central pit, he forces out the faintest whisper, an echo of a scream. 

Cullen jolts awake. 

He chokes out a shout, heart in his throat, nightclothes soaked in sweat. The glow lamp beside his bed casts him in a sickly pale yellow light. 

When the shaking stops, he shivers.

He strips off his nightclothes and uses the tail of his shirt to mop away the sweat chilling his chest. He wipes the foulness under his armpits and dries his back. Gets up. Walks to the foot of his bed where he takes out a heavy blanket from a trunk and unfolds it, covering his sweat-damp bedsheets. He sits down and leans back. The glow lamp casts a lurching shadow across his belly where his forearm blocks the lamp’s light. Each night it takes him longer than it should to climax.

For years he has pictured the same face. Large eyes, caramel skin, him moving inside her as lithe limbs clutch his body. That sharp edge of her heel digging into his back. Their breath shuddering ever louder. But this time, she is not the woman whom he imagines. Not during the moment just before he comes. He sees another face, a different woman who he knows here in Kirkwall. A woman who saved him. 

Cullen cannot decide how he feels as he spills across his abdomen. 

Empty.

Both of these women saved him. The first when all he wanted was to live, the second when he couldn’t care less. 

He catches his breath as the second woman’s image lingers, her face softened in his memory by the passage of a few weeks of time. He tries recalling each of her features just as they were while she was lit in overcast light on that day he met her out on the Wounded Coast. 

Hawke.

The moment he met her, he knew exactly what she was, even before she ripped a blast of ice from the fade. The horrors surrounding him staggered and froze, holding still just long enough for him to shatter them with hard strikes from his blade. The battle against Wilmod, those demons, and those shades ended just as quickly as it started. Hawke asked Cullen if he was okay. His muscles shook uncontrollably as his blood roared through his veins. He had known something was wrong—terribly wrong—but he hadn’t expected the horrors that lay slain at their feet, littered across the windswept rocky campsite. Cullen could hardly speak. His heart pounded in his throat. Yet Hawke remained calm. Concerned. _‘Are you all right?’_

She was Fereldan, just like him. He could tell by her accent and by the style of clothing she and her companions wore. Never once that day had it crossed Cullen’s mind to arrest her. That thought should have. Hawke was an apostate mage.

Cullen leans back against the chilly wall and lets his legs flop over the side of his bed. He looks out his window, out to the darkness surrounding the Gallows.

In his mind, he can still piece together her features. Hawke’s long, narrow nose and her angular chin. That cropped mop of windblown black hair and those piercing blue eyes that locked on him from behind a messy curtain of side-swept bangs. She had a nice smile and her voice remained calm despite the madness they had just cut down. ‘ _It’s over now. Catch your breath. We’ll stand guard and wait.’_

Once her image feels fully formed in his mind, Cullen tries to forget her. He reaches for his shirt and mops the sticky spill from his skin. He wipes clean the tip of his cock. He wonders if Hawke has ever bedded a templar. Do apostates bed templars? He thinks not. Most of the circle mages in Ferelden shared their bodies with anything that moved. 

But not his girl. Not Neria.

Neria had promised herself to him, and Cullen believed her, even after she left, but not once she returned. The last he heard, Neria is still bedding that templar recruit who joined the Grey Wardens. Cullen has also heard rumors of other men in Neria’s life. Just like every other mage, her promises meant nothing in the end. 

He had been stupid to expect otherwise. Mages can never be trusted. Not with anything, especially not matters of the heart. So why must he think about another mage again? Hawke is nothing more than a pretty smile. In the end, nothing between him and her could ever work.

.

.

Weariness always strikes Cullen in the middle of the afternoon. He stands in the shade, off to one side in the front courtyard of the Gallows. He keeps his back to the wall. Hawke is here again. He doesn’t understand why. 

She is talking with Solivitus while picking through the man’s box of herbal recipes. Solivitus writes something on a piece of paper and blows the ink dry before handing it to her. When a Fomari merchant passes a written message, normally it’s a matter of guild business but Hawke is an apostate. She shouldn’t be here. 

The relaxed posture of her lanky frame reminds Cullen of the confidence she displays every time they meet. Hawke never cowers and her words never falter. Despite what she is, the sword of mercy embossed on his breastplate means nothing to her. Instead, she strolls the Gallows with the casual air of a noblewoman walking through a market. 

Seeing her makes Cullen think about the debt that the Order owes to her. Every time she visits the Gallows, she always asks him about Keran. She did what he should have but could not. The day Keran returned, Cullen felt cheap giving Hawke the four goal sovereigns he had in his pouch. What a meaningless token for saving Keran’s life.

.

.

Later that night, Cullen lies in bed. The quick spasms of the muscles in his midsection remain in shadow where his forearm blocks his glow lamp’s light. Hawke’s name spills from him as he comes. Her self-assured gaze lingers before him as her image fades. 

Cullen rolls to his side and stares at the dimples in the plaster wall, just beside his bed. 

.

.

It’s mid afternoon and the recruits have just finished weapons practice. Cullen leaves them and jogs out to the front courtyard. He searches the square, eying each patron at the merchants’ stalls and then he lopes down the stairs to the ferry docks. 

She isn’t here.

On most afternoons Hawke stops by the Gallows but not today. At least, not yet.

Earlier at breakfast Cullen overheard Karras describe a female apostate who sounded just like Hawke. The Gallows aren’t safe for her any longer and Cullen needs to warn her.

He waits, leaning back against a wall in the shade, eying the passengers that disembark from each ferry. 

When the dinner bell rings the docks are empty. Other than Cullen, no one else is here, not even the ferryman.

.

.

Three days later Hawke arrives at the Gallows in the afternoon. She talks with Thrask while a Grey Warden named Anders stands beside her. Cullen hates the man on sight. Back in Ferelden, he knew of this mage, a blasphemer who twists Andraste’s words to his liking. Ferelden’s Circle fed Anders, clothed him, taught him, and housed him but the mage spat everything back in their face. For years Anders had been nothing but trouble. And then the Wardens took him in. Now he is here.

Cullen gazes across the emptiness in the center of the courtyard, his eyes focusing on nothing. He waits for Hawke to finish with Thrask. Waits for her to walk across the sunbaked paving stones and approach him on her own accord.

Eventually she does. 

She says hello. Cullen exchanges pleasantries with her as Anders taps his foot. When Hawke is ready to leave, Cullen finally says what he needs to tell her. 

He looks her in the eye. He has heard rumors about her, he says, and he hopes they aren’t true. 

She listens, her posture never stiffening, eyes never narrowing, remaining fully calm. She nods her head and wishes him well.

All the while, Anders hovers over her, his body far too close. “I wouldn’t trust this templar if I were you. Let’s go.” He turns away without another glance back and walks toward the docks.

Hawke appears as if she is about to leave but, instead, she takes a step closer to Cullen. “I’ll be at the Hanged Man tonight,” she whispers. “Meet me there.”

.

.

After dinner and the evening chant, Cullen wanders over to Lowtown. He wants another chance to speak with Hawke, and not just because the templars know of her. She took the time to listen to him that day they met on the Wounded Coast. He told her about the attack in Ferelden and about the nightmares he still has, all as she nodded her head, taking in every word he said. She understood. Since then, he’s tried talking to her in the Gallows front courtyard. He has told her more about his past, but other people are always around.

Cullen knows how to find the Hanged Man tavern but, until now, he has never gone inside.Hawke sits at a small table in the back. Anders is with her, as is the city guardswoman and a beardless dwarf.As Cullen walks forward,the din of voices in the tavern grows quiet.People stare at him. Those who stand move back.A room full of unfriendly eyes follow Cullen’s every step.Cullen walks over to the bar.

He asks the bartender for two mugs of ale. As the bartender pours Cullen opens his coin pouch. He counts out a few copper plus an extra coin for a tip. 

“No need.” The bartender says. He pushes the mugs forward. “It’s on the house, Ser.”

The sea of eyes follow Cullen as he approaches Hawke and her companions. The only sound in the Hanged Man is the clacking of Cullen’s boot heels. Hawke smiles at him. She slides over on the bench, making space for him to sit. 

“I got this one for you,” he says to her. He places the mugs of ale on the table.  

The guardswoman looks him straight in the eye. “Have a seat, Knight Captain.” Her voice carries the cool tone of authority.

“You have absolutely no jurisdiction over me,” Anders states.

“You’re right. I don’t. Indeed, there are aspects of this world that do not revolve around you.”

Anders sneers and the dwarf makes a feeble joke. 

Cullen settles beside Hawke. “You wanted to talk,” he says to her.

“I want to drink.” She raises her mug and yells out, “To a successful expedition!” 

Her companions join in the toast. “To the expedition!” 

Cullen knows nothing about the expedition they toast, but he raises his mug, clinks it with Hawke’s and then with the guardswoman’s before taking a swig. 

The air around him explodes with the raucous sound of Fereldan voices. No one in the tavern stares at him any longer. Hawke’s companions shout to hear each other over the noise as they huddle around their table. Anders and the beardless dwarf unfold a map and engage in a heated discussion. The guardswoman makes a joke with Hawke. Cullen can hardly follow a word anyone says above the noise. He leans back and drinks his ale. Each time he catches Hawke’s eye, he smiles. 

She always smiles back.

After another round of ale, Hawke leans into Cullen’s shoulder and speaks into his ear. “Varric rents a suite in the back. Let’s go. It’s private. We can talk.”

Immediately she is on her feet, beckoning him forward, so he gulps the last of his ale and gets up. No one seems to notice as he follows her up the stairs.

Cullen enters Varric’s suite. He notices the unconcerned way in which Hawke leans back against the bolt and locks the door behind them. This woman trusts him far more than an apostate should. Although, after all she’s done, Cullen will never do anything to harm her. He and Keran owe her their lives. He’ll never turn her in. Even so, her confidence exceeds that of most people he knows. Already, he admires Hawke far more than any templar should. 

Maybe it’s the buzz of alcohol in his blood, but he is certain Hawke will never allow him to be hurt, not while she is with him. He is sure of this even though he can’t understand why she bothers. Hawke would shield him. She’s done it before and if the floorboards beneath them suddenly heaved and splintered, demons bursting through, shooting up to towering heights, Hawke would not leave him to face demons on his own. He knows this. He has seen her call forth the Maker’s spirit and cast His holy light. This woman has defeated demons, turning them to dust before his eyes. On that day Hawke met him, she had no reason to risk her life yet she did, even after he beat one of his recruits when blinded by fright and rage. Hawke had been right. He shouldn’t have been out on the coast alone. He shouldn’t have. But Hawke had been there. She fought at his side.

Hawke walks across the room, turning her back to Cullen. As she bends forward to rummage through a cupboard, all of her length and lankiness gives way to the fullness of her hips. A pair of glasses clink as she stands upright.

“Varric wouldn’t mind if we drank a Nevarran red,” she says. “Although, he’ll have words with me if I broke open anything else. So, a simple Navarran tafelwein?” She waggles the bottle and two glasses before setting them down on the table. She pours the first glass nearly to the rim and offers it to him.

“Just half of that,” he says, feeling a sudden need to stay alert. 

She shrugs, takes the glass, and knocks back half of it, gulping it down as if it were ale. Using the back of her hand she wipes her mouth. “Suit yourself.” She pours wine into the other glass, filling it halfway, and she passes it to him before topping her glass off.

Everything about Hawke’s posture exudes the casualness of an old friend. She sits across from him and kicks up her feet onto a chair. “Do you know of any work I can do for the templars? I’m raising money for an expedition. I need some more coin.”

Cullen frowns. His stomach tightens. Why must she ask this? Does she not understand what he said earlier that day in the Gallows?

Chantry law leaves little doubt on what he should say, but civil law in Kirkwall bends and flexes like a bow. Shoot the right target and everyone ignores the arrow’s foreign fletching and poison tip. Cullen feels confused over the pliancy in Kirkwall’s law. So many convoluted webs of nepotism. Obligatory payments of bribes. He tried to make sense of it when he first arrived. He still tries, but his mistakes outstrip any praise he has received.

And now, here is Hawke. Cullen knows the price of unpaid debts just as well as he can recite Chantry law. He knows the touch of the Maker's spirit and he once knew right from wrong. When he was younger, such things were much easier to know. Right and wrong were clearer when he was a young boy, working through his afternoon lessons. As an infant he had been given to the Chantry, handed off to the lay sisters, women seeking salvation for prior sins born out of ignorance and need. Women who wrapped their strong arms around him as he sat in the warmth of their laps. Their soft breasts pillowing his back. His thin legs dangling below his shorts, small freckled hands holding open a book as he and a lay sister struggled to read its words. All those afternoons listening to one self-assured voice or another, speaking softly, right beside his ear. Together, they deciphered the words of the Maker, learning the messages He had given to the children who were left behind.

Cullen sips his wine, the oaky tannins rough in his mouth after he swallows. 

“I'm sorry," he says. "The Order now handles its business internally.”

Hawke frowns at him, chin dimpling under her upturned mouth. 

His stomach tightens again. He needs her to understand the magnitude of the words in Karras’s report, partly for her own good, partly so he is never troubled with the task of arresting her. He owes her this, and he is certain that in her heart she is good. For as long as Hawke lives in the spirit of Andraste’s words, he can overlook what she is.

He swirls the wine in his glass without drinking it. “The Templars commend your service. I believe you keep the Order’s interests at heart, but the Knight Commander is concerned about an apostate mentioned in a report.” 

Should he speak of Ser Karras by name? If Hawke worked as a mercenary for hire, Cullen wishes not to know. After all, she is planning an expedition and putting her past behind her. Any sins from prior days are left for the Maker to judge, and not to be weighed by men’s biased hands. 

He decides not to name any names. “A senior knight filed a report about renegade activities performed by another knight. This report described a suspected apostate.” Cullen sips his wine, letting its hints of cassis and blackberry linger on his tongue. “Even if the Knight Commander fails to acknowledge the weight of your positive contributions, the Order will forever be in your debt. So, while I assume these other rumors aren’t true, any further involvement between you and the Order is likely to lead to trouble.” 

Karras’s report on the Starkhaven affair had not named Thrask's accomplices, but his descriptions fit Hawke and that dwarven friend of hers far too closely. Unless she lays low, it will only be a matter of time before they find her.

“What is your opinion of Ser Thrask?” Hawke asks hims as she toys with the hem of her shirt. 

Cullen laughs at her audacity, a laugh with the power to wash her words clean from this world. “I am not at liberty to discuss the Order’s business with an outsider.”

Again, her face knots into a frown. She looks down into her drink, avoiding his gaze.

“Hawke, I meant what I said today at the Gallows. There are rumors about you, and there is only so much I can say in your favor, especially if these rumors are used against you.”

“There is only one rumor that matters,” she says. Her words take aim at him, standing erect as a row of archers ready to fire.

Cullen swirls the wine in his glass and holds it up to the light, watching how the red tears of wine paint a high curtain before slowly rolling back down the inside of the glass. He feels tipsy. He’s warm around his collar and his cheeks tingle with heat. “Earlier, you said you were financing an expedition. Do you mind if I ask what kind?”

“I’m working with some Dwarven merchants. I’m their business partner. We plan to enter the Deep Roads. If my investment pays off, I should do well. My mother is petitioning the Viscount to return our family estate in Hightown. The money from the expedition will help settled prior debts.”

“Petitioning the Viscount?”

“My grandfather was Lord Aristide Amell. He would have been Viscount himself, you know, but that’s not how matters worked out.”

Back when Cullen was a child, a few of the young lay sisters read and wrote as well as the Chantry priests. These women wore their hair in elaborate braided coils. They made him scrub all the dirt from his fingernails before they sat him at a desk so he could practice writing his letters. As he grew older, he wondered what those ladies had done to end up in the Chantry. Now, he wonders about the poor decisions their parents or grandparents had made.

He asks Hawke the obvious question. “When your family’s fortunes and titles are restored, will they lend their public support to the Order?”

“We always have,” she says, although her tone suggests that choice was never involved.

Cullen overlooks this. Instead, he says what he believes is right. “I recommend you no longer seek involvement with the Order’s business. At least, not at this time. It would not be prudent to become entangled in situations you do not understand, especially as an outsider. No matter who the templar knights may be, do not offer to become involved in their affairs.”

“Even if that knight is you?”

“I only offer you my deepest gratitude.” He reaches for the bottle of wine and refills his glass. “Please, do not make your situation more difficult, not when you have a choice.”

“And you claim to know my choices?”

Her dispassionate stare unsettles him. He looks away to the ghost of himself reflected in a mirror on the wall behind her. He and Hawke should be passing their time together without arguing. Two Fereldans, relaxing, drinking wine. This is all he wants.

“I’m sorry,” Hawke says. Her expression is as apologetic as her words. 

He believes her, and not because he wants to but because he needs to. A belief as unshakeable as the unwavering home of the Pommel Star at the tip of the Southern Flame. 

“Is Keran doing well?” she asks.

“He is. I keep an eye on him and check him daily for signs of possession. What happened is hard for him to talk about, but he seems alright, I mean, he doesn’t seem to be…” Cullen doesn’t know what to say. He gulps more wine. The acid tingles in his throat, a slow burn down to his stomach. 

“I understand,” Hawke says.

“Thank you.”

Her long fingers toy with her empty glass, the tip of her index finger slowly circling the edge of the rim. When she looks at him, she gives him a lopsided smile. Such a forgiving benediction. Half drunk, he receives her blessing, her small gift of grace. He needs this, even when coming from a woman like her. He needs to remember all that makes him human, all that others see as good.

He needs to confess. 

“After what happened to Keran, after he told me all that had been done to him, I cannot let go of it. I think of how this disaster could have been far worse. It makes me lose sleep. I keep trying to tell myself that I did not fail Wilmod and Keran — that they made their own choices — but I cannot convince myself that I am not at fault.”

“Wilmod and Keran were victims of a crime, just like yourself. None of you deserve blame.”

“But they were my responsibility. They were under my command. I should have known better. And had it gone for the worst? Oh, Blessed Andraste. So many of us in the Gallows could have died, all in one night, just like back in the tower.”

“It didn’t happen.”

“But it could have. Ever since I was a boy, I only wanted to be a knight. I never asked for any of this. It's always a losing battle. If templars cannot learn to remain vigilant, then what?”

“You do your best and you do what you must,” Hawke says.

He wonders where she finds her strength, and he wishes she could share it with him. She mentioned her father once, and a sister who was also a mage who died in the Blight. Cullen had met Hawke’s brother and he knows of her uncle and mother. Cullen never knew who fathered him. Never knew the mother who bore him either. Hawke acts as if she belongs, as if she knows her place. She alwayslooks rested when Cullen sees her. Lax, easy posture, quick with her smile. She and he are the same age, although he looks years her senior. At twenty-five, Cullen feels he is approaching fifty. Nonetheless, Kirkwallers treat him like a young boy dressed up in his father's armor.

“There’s something I want you to know,” he says. “I took time to look into what you asked.”

“Pardon?”

“Over the past month I've looked into how the mages in Kirkwall’s Circle are educated. They are taught little about the words of Andraste and almost nothing about how the Chantry functions. The Order should help improve their education. If mages understood these teachings, they would be more inclined to act cooperatively.”

“Are you so certain?”

“Oh, come now, surely you believe in the Maker and the teachings of His Bride. Didn’t you once say that your sister was a devout Andrastian? Tell me, didn’t her faith serve her well up until the day the Blight took her?”

“She wasn’t confined to a Circle.”

“I don't see how that matters.”

The look on Hawke's face is incredulous. Although he believes his words are right, he feels inconsequentially small. Her disbelief cast stark light on the ways in which he is different from her. 

“I don't know,” he says. “There are many things I don't understand. But, if a person cultivates unwavering belief in the Maker, they develop strength to resist all temptations, large and small. Their thoughts become too pure to feed demons. When that happens, they walk in the Maker’s light.”

Someone outside raps on the door and a voice calls out,“You wouldn't mind allowing your host to join in on your private party?” It was Varric.

Hawke winks at Cullen as she slides the wine bottle toward him. It's nearly empty. What is left hardly fills the bottom of his glass. 

Varric, Anders, and the city guardswoman join them. Another bottle of wine is opened as maps are spread out on the table. Varric pulls a heavy book from a shelf and reads passages aloud. He speaks the lore about lost Dwarven thaigs that are lined with broad roads paved in precious metals. Stories about darkspawn that Anders corrects. Chronicles of ancient paragons, recorded by the Shaperate, those Dwarven non-believers. 

Cullen watches Hawke drink in words that paint the images of her dreams. She has an adventurer's heart. Cullen wants her to go on her expedition. He wants her to succeed.

With another bottle of wine emptied, the guardswoman calls it a night. Anders agrees and follows the guardswoman out. After Anders walks into the hallway, he looks back over his shoulder and gives Hawke an expectant look. When Hawke walks out of the room, she remains three paces behind Anders, letting Cullen walk at her side. They head down the stairs, into the main room of the tavern. The crowd has grown thin. Only the roughest men remain and they shout gruff threats at each other as their chair legs scrape sharply over the floorboards. Here in the middle of the Hanged Man with Hawke at his side, Cullen feels dangerous. 

Hawke follows Anders to the tavern’s front door. Just a few more steps and she’ll be gone. The next breath Cullen takes feels like his longest ever. 

He says her name. She stops. She stands so close to him that he can smell the wine on her breath. Her eyes study his.

“How much more do you need to raise for the expedition?” he asks.

She tells him.

“I think I can help you.” 

After a moment of uncertainty, she waves Anders off. She asks Cullen to walk her home.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After all she has done, Cullen wants Hawke to be safe which means that she should leave Kirkwall. (Occurs in 9:31 during DA2's Act 1)

**CHAPTER 2**

During the halfway point between midnight and dawn, Lowtown’s streets are deserted. Rows of vendors’ tables lay barren, nothing marking the former presence of their wares beyond a few mud soaked pages ripped from a shipping manifest. Cullen and Hawke’s footfalls ricochet through a maze of seven storey walls. Whispers amplify into shouts.Only the distant clangs and acrid stench from the foundry provide a reminder than other people are awake just off to the south where smokey light rises up above the buildings.

Hawke leads Cullen through passages, taking them in and out of hexyards confined by the massive tenements built from crumbling limestone. They move through narrow alleys, past empty laundry lines, beneath broken arches, and up and down short flights of stairs. A communal garbage heap smolders as two soot-covered youths poke the refuse with long sticks, turning the trash so all of it will burn. Cullen doubts he can retrace this path during the day. Finding his way out of here will be difficult and he wonders if this is why Hawke feels safe showing a templar where she lives. 

The sounds Cullen and Hawke make are bold and menacing as they tramp through the streets. Submerged in their echoes, Cullen imagines for a moment that they are Lowtown vigilantes on patrol, keeping the neighborhood safe. Judging from the way Hawke moves, this is easily who she is.   

A paving stone tilts beneath Cullen’s foot, throwing his balance. He recovers, clumsily, his palm slamming into the nearest wall to brace himself. Hawke slows. 

“We’re almost there,” she says.

The alley opens into another large hexyard. A confusing complex of aged buildings loom around them. At ground level, rows of rusted metal doors are locked for the night. Clusters of stairways lead up to apartments above. When morning arrives, the hundreds of people sleeping inside will spill out into this dreary yard.

Hawke stops in the middle of the hexyard and quickly looks around. 

“Here we are,” she says. Her voice echoes less in the open where they stand.

“You live here?”

“Yes.” But she doesn’t point out the apartment that is hers. “So, what is the job you were going to tell me about?”

“It’s not a job.”

“Oh, of course. I just thought…” she shrugs.

“The amount you need to raise isn’t all that much. I thought, after all you have done, it’s only fair to compensate you more.” Cullen pokes a gloved finger into the folds of his sash, catching the loop on his coin pouch. He opens the pouch and digs out his gold sovereigns.

All in a rush Hawke steps into him, her body pressing against his, her hand pushing his coin pouch back into his sash. “Maker’s balls!” She looks over her shoulder. “Not here. Come on. Come with me.”

She bounds up a flight of stairs and Cullen jogs after her. She palms her key from a pocket, opens a door, and lets him in. 

The sourness of boiled cabbage hangs in the air, mingling with the odors of poverty. Heavy snores seep through a neighboring wall. He stumbles over a pile of boots lying near the door. The floor insists on creeking beneath Cullen no matter how lightly he steps. 

Hawke speaks to him in a whisper. “Stay quiet. These walls are thin.” She lights an oil lamp on a desk. The soft light reveals a neatly arranged stack of papers, a pen and ink set, and a leather bound journal secured with a small brass lock. 

“It doesn’t matter if you’re dressed as a templar. In this part of the city, in the middle of the night, people get jumped for flashing mere copper,” she says. 

“What about the city guard?” 

She smirks and shakes her head, but then she climbs up onto a wooden packing crate and beckons with her hand. “Come up here. I want to show you something out the window.”

Cullen’s mind races ahead as vertigo knocks his internal axis, leaving him whirling before he steps forward. He belongs in his quarters, back in the Gallows, not taking hold of an apostate’s hand, pressing himself gracelessly against her a few hours before dawn.

He reaches for his coin pouch. This time he’ll leave all of it on her desk. “Hawke,” he says. He fumbles with the knot on the pouch’s cord, “I want you to have this. I should probably—”

“Shh! Keep your voice down.” Hawke squats on the crate. She reaches for him and grips his metal wrist guard. “This has to do with Keran and Macha. Come look.” She stands, pulling him up with her.

Cullen’s templar armor feels impossibly heavy as he hauls himself onto the crate to stand behind Hawke. She presses forward against the wall, her hands braced on the sill, her face in the window’s open air. There is just enough room for him to stand behind her to the side, not too improperly close. He looks over her shoulder, out over the apartment block that is gridded through the window’s metal bars. 

“See that fifth floor window with a light on?” Hawke’s voice hardly needs to make a sound with him standing so close to her.

“Yes?”  

“Macha lives there. Now look left and up one floor to where that guy is sitting on that ledge.”

“I see him.”

“He’s a lookout for the Sharps. His name is Ardal. He wasn’t on the lookout before when we were outside, so we were lucky. He signals the Sharps to ambush people they’re going to mug. The other gang members are hidden in the shadows where no one can see them. No doubt they are taking their positions right now, watching the hexyard and getting ready to shake up targets when the night shift at the foundry ends. The foundry workers get paid today.”

“This happens often?”

“Every week.”

“So, what does this have to do with Macha and Keran? And why is she up so late?”

“She does piecework for a tailor. Keran’s stipend doesn’t go far, especially since Macha has a toddler. Her husband died a year ago and left her in debt.”

“Oh. So that’s what this is all about.” He knows Hawke thinks it unfair that Keran must remain a recruit, but he could still be a danger and there was nothing else Cullen could do.

“Last week the Sharps were attacked by another gang and the lookout guy, Ardal, jumped for cover. He went through Macha’s window. Keran was on personal leave that night, so he was there when it happened. Once Ardal was in their apartment, he saw Keran’s armor stacked up on the floor and realized Keran was a templar. The next day, Ardal and six members of the Sharps followed Macha and cornered her in an empty alley. They told her that if she doesn’t get Keran to steal lyrium from the Gallows, they’re going to hurt her daughter and then they’ll go after her next.”

“Keran doesn’t have access to lyrium. He’s only a recruit,” Cullen scoffs.

“These thugs don’t know that and they don’t care.”

“I hope Keran isn’t planning on cooperating with them.”

“Of course he isn’t. But Keran is scared and, after all that happened between you and Wilmod, Keran is afraid of you too. That’s why he told me.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” 

“No, just make sure that Keran’s sister and niece are safe. I have information on the Sharps’ gang leader and I know where they have their hideout. My friends are clearing out the Sharps tomorrow night. We even have unofficial help from the City Guard.”

“If Keran confirms that a threat was made on the Order, I can also send templars to help you.”

“No, Keran is already worried that he’s in enough trouble as it is. Just make sure his sister and his niece are safe until the Sharps are gone.”

“Are you sure?” Cullen asked.

“You’ll make sure none of them end up hurt, right?” 

“I’ll arrange for Macha and her daughter to stay at the Chantry with a pair of trusted templars as protection.” 

“Good.”

They fall into a silence not quite awkward, and somewhat expectant. A strong wind blows through the hexyard, lifting a whirl of dust into the air. Dried leaves that had blown down from trees in Hightown swirl like a witch’s brew within a cauldron. The wind whistles through the aged buildings, sweeping trash from alleys, and flapping torn banners so the fabric cracks like shots ringing out through the tenements. Cullen thinks he should leave but he remains where the two of them stand.

Cullen knows that once he returns to the Gallows he won’t be able to forget the hushed whispers they have shared. All of the small gestures that took place inside this tenement flat will follow him. He memorizes the sensation of standing close to Hawke while looking out over her shoulder, his arm almost around her as he leans his hand on the sill for balance. He imagines this as something they do every night.

But no matter how this night ends, he knows he’ll wonder if he had gone too far with her or if he had not gone far enough. Either way, he already knows that he will feel regret. He tries to ignore this as he breathes in the floral scent clinging to her hair. Without exchanging a word, they wait for the swirling gust outside to die down.

When the wind calms, Hawke turns where she stands, her hip slipping against the wall until her body faces him. Her knee knocks into his leg. In that moment, Cullen feels conspicuous. How bizarre all of this seems. Him standing on a packing crate, looking out a window from within an apostate’s rundown apartment. A long silence hangs between them. He shouldn’t be doing this.

Cullen jumps down with a clatter and the loud snoring in the other room stops. He hears a cough. Hawke puts her finger to her lips, shushing him. 

He remains frozen until the snoring starts again.

He should go. He fumbles for the loop on his coin pouch. Hawke steps down and stands beside him. He pulls out the only three sovereigns he has plus an extra twenty-five silver and hands these coins to Hawke. She weighs them in her palm as she looks him in the eye. She might as well be weighing his soul.

She says, “If you are giving this much away, Macha needs money far more than I do.”

“No, you need to get out of Kirkwall. It’s for you.”

“But I’m not leaving Kirkwall. I’m coming back after the expedition is over. I won’t be gone long. Only three months. Maybe four. Once I settle my family’s debts, I’ll be up in Hightown while Macha remains stuck down here.”

“I don’t know. Just— just consider it a loan. When you get back, repay the money to Macha.”

Hawke’s face gleams as she smiles. She pockets the coins and leans into him. She leans so close he can almost feel her weight pressing against him. She whispers,“Before I was born, my father knew a templar who always thought about what mattered the most when he interpreted the law. My brother was named after him. I know you have a tough job, but you’re a good man. I won’t forget what you’ve done to help me and to help others.”

Cullen doesn’t know what to say. His stomach knots. His innards twist around a hard metal rod. The flesh around his skull constricts. His head throbs. He needs to go.

“Be safe, Hawke. Maker watch over you.” 

He leaves before she can say anything more.

.

.

He moves through Lowtown, traveling the deserted streets without following any set route, but he always keeps to the widest roads, always heading toward the nighttime sounds of the docks, of cargo being packed and loaded. He doesn’t know where he is but when he finds a long stairway fitted with a pulley ramp, he knows where it will take him. His descent into the darkness goes on forever.

Cullen is too late to catch the last ferry and too early for the one that runs at dawn. Boarding houses line the waterfront. He enters one that rents rooms by the hour. With the last of his coin, he pays for a room plus a carafe of cheap wine. 

When he unlocks the door to room twenty-four, it smells of mildew, tobacco, and sour sweat. He ignores the stains on the yellowed bedsheets and props the back of a wooden chair against the door, hooking it beneath the knob, even after he latches the door’s lock. 

He undresses down to his undergarments before opening the shutters on the room’s only window. A bell on a buoy tolls as the night air chills the beads of sweat on his skin. He looks out over the moonlit harbor while drinking wine straight from the carafe.

A glow lamp gives off a feeble orange light. He moves the lamp to the bed’s pillow, lays himself down, and closes his eyes. Lying on his back, acid burns in his throat. He drank too much wine. He deserves this. He closes his eyes.

Foghorns in the harbor move closer, echoing a mournful sound that morphs into Wilmod shouting. Cullen knows what he must do. He must save Wilmod. That young man cannot make another mistake, so Cullen beats him for all the sins the two of them share. That is when Cullen remembers Neria. He sees her. Tiny. Lying in the center of the chamber, curled in a ball on the floor, barely kept warm in her padded silk robe. Greagoir will make him kill her if she fails. No, not her.He’ll be told to kill the horror she might become. He’ll behead it using the sword strapped to his back, a sword heavy with the weight of the entire Circle tower. He wears the tower fortress as his armor and stands out in the middle of the lake in the night. Neria said she will never give herself to demons and he wants to believe this is true. He wants to, but when Neria doesn’t give in, Cullen does. Rage rips out through his open mouth, tearing his flesh inside out, exposing all the ugliness within him. He draws his blade when he’s told,pointing it straight ahead, at anyone standing in front of him. Again, he sees Wilmod. The young man who is a mirror of Cullen. Wilmod cowers on the grass, crawling backward, voicing feeble excuses. And then suddenly she is there, Hawke is there, speaking to him. _You shouldn’t have been out here alone with him._ Cullen shouldn’t know who this woman is but, somehow, this time he does. Hawke stands above him. The mangled bodies of shades and abominations litter the hillside. Is Cullen the one who is dead or has he just killed Wilmod? Cullen no longer knows who he is. All the air is sucked from his lungs. 

_You shouldn’t have been out here alone._

He jolts upright, clutching at his neck, heart jammed in his throat. Acidic sweat pulses out of his pours. 

After a dozen gasping breaths, the feeble orange light from the glowlamp reminds Cullen where he is. He reaches for the last of the wine, drinks it down with a gulp, and wipes the wetness from his mouth with the back of his hand. 

He looks out the open window. The sky is still dark. Bells on buoys toll.

Cullen leans back and loosens the draw string on his smalls. As he works himself toward a slow climax, he pictures Neria’s lithe form out of habit. But, just as he comes, he recalls the floral scent that clung to Hawke’s hair and the warmth of standing right behind her, his arm almost touching her while leaning against the window sill. After he chokes out a sob, his cock feels foreign in his hand. The semen pooling on his skin reeks of shame.

Out of courtesy for whomever sleeps here next, he reaches for his linen shirt rather than the sheet when he wipes himself clean.

Staring up at a lumpy water stain on the ceiling, he prays for emptiness. 

Instead, he hears an echo of himself shouting at Neria. The indignation on her face. That other templar who became a warden reaching for her arm.

Sometimes Cullen thinks of writing to Neria. He never does. The last thing she would want is his belated admission of gratitude. She’s moved on and so should he. Anyhow, all of it was wrong. It still is. 

Cullen rolls onto his side and stares across the dimly lit room. Hawke will surely be asleep by now, curled up among the snoring and the sour smells of boiled cabbage. He isn’t certain if he wants to see her again but he knows that he wants her to be safe. He wants her to understand how thankful he is for all she has done. 

But she doesn’t understand. First she asked him for a job and then she called him a good man. Maybe she’s just polite to an idiot who measures out gratefulness in the clinking of coins. But Hawke needs to leave the city. Karras is looking for her. If she doesn’t leave soon, she’ll be found.

Cullen is certain he never wants to see Hawke again. 

He stares at the cracked plaster, and maps out the web of dark mildew spidering across the wall. He will never see her again. He is certain of it and he needs to be certain.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen assumes Hawke has left Kirkwall until he runs into her in Hightown. She invites him to spend time with her. (Occurs in 9:32, after Act 1 but before Act 2)

**CHAPTER 3**

When the Order’s business takes Cullen to Hightown, he prefers scheduling it with a midday break, which allows him to attend the noontide Chant.The familiar words sooth him, immersing him in a predictable rhythm as he gazes at the bronze statue of Andraste, memorial candles flickering around her feet. Before he leaves, he always lights a candle and says a prayer for the dead.

One day, late in the spring, Cullen fails to recognize Hawke when she is dressed in Hightown finery, bending forward to light a candle near the Chantry’s altar. One minute she is just another wealthy noblewoman saying a prayer. The next, she turns to face him and takes him by surprise. She even sounds like aristocracy when she greets him. It doesn’t matter. Hawke is back. Cullen missed her.

Minutes later, he’s walking beside her as they step into the sunshine. She does all of the talking and her tales are a whirlwind of fantasy. Stories of ogres and dragons and golems. A Dwarven thaig so old it not only predates the First Blight, but even the Dwarves themselves have forgotten it. Her stories become increasingly more unbelievable. Cullen laughs while trying not to sound incredulous. She doesn’t care. Her tales grow even taller and he listens, drunk on the sound of her voice. 

She invites him to join her at an Antivan dessert shop. He is on duty, but he goes with her anyway. They sit together under the shade of a canvas canopy, eat scoops of mellon sorbetto, and drink syrupy sweet dessert wine. In the end, Hawke insists on paying. Rather than leave, they linger just outside the shop. 

Hawke brings up Templar business. “I never forgot the loan you gave me. I paid interest on it when I saw Macha last week. I gave her ten sovereigns and told her that the money was from the Order. She said Keran is still doing well although she worries about him. She thinks the Order is too harsh on the recruits.”

“We have a difficult job.”

“You do, but for the recruits the job can be far more difficult.” She pauses. “So, how have things been for you since we’ve last spoken?”

What can he possibly say? Tell her how difficult it is to fill the ranks of the Kirkwall’s Order? The ever present lack of trained soldiers who are capable of handling daily threats?Or that Meredith had closed the ranks, disallowing help from outside? That he, as Knight Captain, lacked new ideas on how to police problems far larger than his resources allowed? That the city of Kirkwall itself seemed cursed, although he didn’t have a shred of evidence to prove that.So, what can he say? Complain how his job has been difficult and sleep even harder to find? How he feels alone all the time, despite having people around him? He cannot talk about this mid-afternoon in the middle of Hightown. Instead, he asks Hawke about how her family is lending support to the Order.

Hawke laughs. “My mother made a generous contribution.”

“Of course,” he says. Cullen already knew of their donations to the Circle’s library.Some of the money bought textbooks he had recommended: a moral analysis of the life of Andraste and an exegesis on the Chant.The Amell estate now sponsored the cost of training and equipping ten of the newest templar recruits. They had also made substantial donations to Hightown’s Chantry, although Cullen never learned how much.

Hawke changes the topic. She tells him of a meeting she had with the Viscount plus a recent adventure visiting the Dalish, and how Varric is halfway through the process of writing a new novel. Just as they are about to part, Hawke stops. 

“My mother is hosting a party next month and the affair is quite a who’s who of Kirkwall. Surely, as Kirkwall’s Knight Captain, you received your invitation?”

He hadn’t.

A momentary look of concern crosses her face. “Oh, there must have been a mistake. It’s a good thing I had a chance to talk with you.” She tells him the date of the party and that she’ll hand deliver an invitation, making up for the one that had surely been delayed by accident.

.

.

After the long descent from Hightown, Cullen meanders through the Lowtown market and wanders the maze of crumbling apartment blocks.Men with strong arms and strong Fereldan accents loiter in clusters.They drink ale from bottles as they talk about jobs they might find in the mines or the foundries.Women bustle through the streets carrying knotted string bags full of cabbages and root vegetables that will soon be chopped and stewed.

Cullen passes the entrance to the Hanged Man and wonders if Hawke’s dwarven friend is sitting inside.Back in Hightown, Cullen should have asked Hawke if she still gathers with her friends in the Hanged Man. He wouldn’t mind seeing her there again, having a drink and talking. He found it easy to talk with her at the Hanged Man.People minded their own business and the words he said there were not repeated back to him the following day by an insubordinate templar or, worse, by his own commanding officer. 

He felt safe talking with Hawke. Issues that perplexed him made sense when he was with her. She asked him questions no one else dared to ask. She made him think. _Sweet Maker_ , Cullen scoffs at himself. Hawke is an apostate. A mage.And nothing will ever change that fact. But she has seen things that the Chantry priests and most of the Order have not. She knows what he cannot put into words. So, regardless of what she is, he wants to meet with her again. But not up in Hightown. Someplace comfortable. Someplace where he is safe saying whatever he feels he needs to say. 

Cullen turns the corner and walks behind the back of a building. A lady approaches him. Her lips shine with glossy red lip-paint, eyes heavily outlined in kohl. 

She opens a small embroidered purse and shows him the purse’s empty interior. 

“Pardon?” He doesn’t understand.

“Fifty bits for a blow. Pay a silver, in you go.”

“What? You don’t… No— no thank you.” 

“Oh, listen to your sweet voice! You’re a Fereldan boy. No wonder you’re down here.” The woman takes his arm. “I should have known when I saw you. All you Fereldan boys are so handsome and strapping. Especially you, Ser. Visiting your family for the evening?”

“I— No, I don’t have family.”

“You don’t? I could keep you company.”

“Oh, no. I mean—” Cullen carefully twists his arm free. “I need to be somewhere else— I need to go.”

“I’m here when you change your mind, Fereldan boy,” she calls after him as he hustles away.

He hurries down a short flight of stairs and turns into a hexyard where girls beat wet laundry clean and young children run after each other, taking turns kicking a ball. Somewhere, facing into one of these hexyards, is the apartment where Macha lives. 

Cullen looks up, searching for the ledge where the lookout man sat on that windy night last autumn. All of these tenement blocks look the same. Crumbling limestone. Trash heaps in the alleys, sagging laundry lines, tattered banners hanging limp, their color bleached by years of sun and dirtied by foundry smoke.

He’ll never find Macha. Even if he saw her, he doesn’t know what he would say. ‘ _Sorry about Keran’s pay. While there is nothing I can do about his status, surely that ten sovereign helped you?_ ’ What garbage! His stomach sours as his diaphragm contracts. He’s unable to help and he knows it. He doesn’t know what to do to aid Keran and nothing he might say to Macha feels right.He should turn around, walk back to the Hanged Man, and order himself a drink.But then he remembers how the locals looked at him that last time. They stared him down like he was the Chantry Law coming in to start trouble.They’re probably protective of that that mage, Anders, who runs the free clinic. Forget it. It’s not worth the bother.

Cullen looks for a stairway that will take him down to the docks.

.

.

Even though it is only late spring, the afternoon sun at the Gallows feels as hot as late summer in Ferelden. Cullen must have been half asleep while standing in the courtyard because the moment Hawke says hello to him, he swears he never saw her approach. 

“How are you?” she asks.

“Good.”

She hands him an envelope stamped with gold leaf and sealed in wax with the Amell family crest. “Here’s your invitation. The guest list only has your name right now but you are welcome to bring a guest.”

“Oh, no. No. It will just be me.” 

She smiles at him in a manner that seems just a bit coy. “I have some business with Solivitus. I’ll see you later.”

Just as she turns he decides to ask. “Wait, Hawke?”

“Yes?”

“Do you… do you still go to the Hanged Man in the evenings?”

“More often than not. I’ll be there tonight.”

“You will?”

“Are you free?”

“Of course.” He knows he sounds far too eager when he says that. 

Her gaze flits down the length of his body before returning to his face. “Good,” she says. “I’ll see you there.”

“Yes. See you tonight.” 

She turns and walks away. After a few steps, she looks over her shoulder and smiles at him before turning back. He watches her walk across the courtyard, over to Solivitus’ shop. Even from a distance, Cullen hears Solivitus greet Hawke with the flourish reserved for the highest of the aristocracy. News always travels fast in the Gallows. Everyone knows about the donations that the Amell family has made to the Circle, the Order, and the Chantry. As far as Kirkwall is concerned, Hawke is one of the highly ranked members of the nobility. So long as she keeps herself on the path of the Maker’s light, the Order will watch over her from afar. 

.

.

After the evening Chant, Cullen signs himself out in the Gallows logbook, granting himself a night of leave.When he boards the ferry he is dressed in his only set of non-regulation clothing: heavy trousers, a linen shirt, and a vest, all of it purchased from a tailor in Denerim, years ago. 

He arrives at the Hanged Man. Men nod at him. Cullen openly greets them back.

He sees Hawke sitting with Varric, Guard Captain Aveline, and that pirate lady, Isabela, who was involved in a shipwreck. Hawke appears to look past him, but when he waves her expression bursts into joyous wide-eyed surprise. She stands up and beckons him over.

“Hey! Look at you!” she says. “There’s a flesh and blood person under all that hardened steel you left behind.”  

To his surprise, Hawke makes a fist and knocks lightly on the center of his chest as if rapping on his missing armored plate. His breath catches in his throat.

“A man out of uniform is always more fun,” the pirate says with a devilish grin.

“Knight Captain?” Aveline motions for him to sit down.

Varric picks up a pitcher and pours Cullen a glass of ale.

Cullen listens to them talk about a ring of criminals that the city guard is tracking and a thinly fictionalized version of the tale that Varric has in draft for his next guard serial. When conversation drifts, Isabela breaks in with a filthy joke and Aveline rolls her eyes. Nevertheless, the joke is funny. Once Cullen stops laughing, Varric invites him to join in on Tuesday night games of diamondback. 

After another pitcher of ale, Isabela busies herself with pages from Varric’s drafted manuscript. She writes tidy comments in the margins while absentmindedly biting the tip of her tongue. Aveline pours over the pages that Isabela hasn’t yet marked. 

Hawke pulls Cullen away from the tavern’s noise. They sit together at a small table in a dimly lit corner. She asks him how he’s been sleeping and how he’s managing now that half a year has passed since Wilmod’s death.They talk about the new group of recruits he is training and the ways that his current Knight Commander differs from his old Commander back in Ferelden.When Hawke asks if he ever thinks of returning to Ferelden, he turns the question around and asks her the same. They both agree that they plan to stay in Kirkwall. For Hawke, this is her family’s home. For Cullen, he goes where the Order sends him although, he is quick to say that he is happy to stay in Kirkwall indefinitely. Hawke smiles as she refills his mug of ale.

.

.

Cullen cannot take leave every evening but over the weeks that follow he finds time any evening that he can. He slips into a comfortable routine of familiar expectations. Tuesdays for diamondback and, on some nights, Cullen is not the only templar to attend. Other evenings are spent with Hawke and her friends. The evening before the party at Hawke’s mansion, she asks again if he will be attending.

“Of course,” he says.

“Good. I’ll keep an eye out for you. Oh, don’t forget,” she tugs lightly at the side of his vest, “It’s formal attire. Mother has something over the top she insists I wear. It’s practically Orlesian. No masks, thankfully. Nothing that crazy. Just ornate. Well, you’ll see it at the party, assuming you can even recognize me. The shoes alone will kill me before the night is through, much less the rest of that dress. If you can’t find me, look for me in the upper balcony above the grand parlor.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Invited as Hawke's guest to a fancy Hightown social at her family's estate, Cullen feels like a fish out of water. Eventually, he makes an inevitable decision. (Occurs in 9:32, after Act 1 but before Act 2)

**CHAPTER 4**

Sometimes Cullen thinks he knows what it is like to be a mage. He’s witnessed his share of harrowings, although he has never been inside the Fade. Yet he understands how demons speak to men and he knows how dreamtime images go wrong. Such images have power. They move through the shadows, stalking spirits, tempting them to eat a blackened fruit from Life’s tree. Just one bite and the spirit transforms into a demon. One more bite, and a person is consumed from within.

Perhaps it is not fair for him to think this but, a typical harrowing seemed an easier trial than what he had survived. Harrowings send mages to well-mapped areas of the Fade. There, they faced carefully selected demons who are brought to a battle ground by a purpose-built lure. Everything mages face during a harrowing ends within the course of one night whereas for an entire month Cullen endured the torments of demons and blood magic, day and night. And unlike an apprentice sent through their harrowing, all of Uldred’s mages wanted Cullen to fail. They wanted him to break. They wanted him to succumb. Every time he passed their tests, they threw him into another.

Lying in bed, Cullen turns onto his side and tucks his blanket beneath his arm. He runs the tips of his fingers over the glow lamp that sits beside his pillow. The glass is warm to the touch. Hot, but not to the point of pain. He places his palm over the glass. This is what it must feel like to hold a magical flame pulled from the Fade. At least, something like this. 

He is not afraid.

.

.

All the next morning Cullen obsessively tends to his duties. The recruits quarters are inspected. Blankets and sheets are stripped from beds and all the furniture pushed aside. Soap bubbles fizz in buckets as four recruits push mops in straight lines, painting stripes of wetness over the floor tiles until they converge on the corner by the door that is still dry. Cullen sends them back to clean spots they missed, and sends them back again to mop over their footprints. Later, when the beds are back in place and the mattresses covered in clean sheets and blankets, tucked and tightened and squared, Cullen finishes his inspection by bouncing a sovereign off the surface of each bed.

After lunch he oversees the recruits’ daily drills. He keeps them in formation, correcting every errant movement until they complete their drills with purposeful precision. Once he releases them, dinner has already begun. 

Rather than eat, Cullen heads to the empty bathhouse. The scalding water leaves his skin red and blotchy, burning himself clean of sweat and sin. He returns to his quarters to dress in the formal Chantry robes issued to every avowed member of the Templar Order. After donning his undergarments, he slips the saffron tunic over his head. Then the crimson tabard and collared jacket. Black cummerbund. Polished boots. Finally, he puts on the Chantry’s midnight blue overcoat embroidered in gold thread. He ties it closed with a wide silk sash. 

By the time the evening Chant has begun, Cullen strides up the long stairway to Hightown. He knows where to find Hawke’s mansion. He has walked past it every time he has made his way to the Hightown Chantry. Normally, the mansion looks no different from others that line Hightown’s plazas but on this evening, the mansion is a stately hive of color and light, buzzing with activity. A middle-aged dwarf greets Cullen at the door and checks his name against the guest list. 

“Ah, you are one of Messere Marian’s guests,” the dwarf says. “I wondered if any of her friends would arrive. There is quite a crowd inside but she told me to say that she will be in the library. Do you know your way to the library, Messere?” 

Cullen did not.

“Well then, go through the foyer, into the main parlor, and then enter the first door on your left. I am certain Messere Marian will be happy to see one of her friends.”

After Cullen thanks the dwarf he takes in the sights and sounds of the people packed in the mansion’s large foyer. Women dressed in billowing layers of pleated silk and intricate Orlesian lace. Men in brocade jackets, tailored trousers, and ornate knee-high boots. As Cullen moves through the foyer’s hubbub, no one in the crowd gives him a moment’s notice. 

The parlor is filled with Hightown’s most notable. The Comte de Launcet and his wife, Seneschal Bran with a female friend, the Reinhardts, and even Viscount Marlowe Dumar himself. All of them listen to a string quartet while glancing around the crowd to see who else has arrived. 

Cullen takes a glass of wine from a serving tray. He walks toward the library door but the doorway is blocked by Saemus Dumar. The young man leans his lanky body against the doorframe while staring up, absentmindedly, at the lighted lanterns hanging above the crowd. When Cullen asks to pass through the door, Saemus sways out of the way, doing nothing more to acknowledge Cullen. And neither do the nobles standing in the library in clusters, chatting as they drink wine and nibble at delicately sliced meat served atop small crisps. 

Kirkwall is the first place Cullen has lived were nobility express their disdain toward the Order. He assumes these people know who he is until a middle aged woman says to him, “And you must be one of the brothers sponsored by the Amell family.”

“Pardon? Oh, no, I’m not a sponsored brother. I am Knight Captain Cullen.”

“A templar knight?” She tut-tuts. “I had thought you were a scholar from the Chantry given your dress. Surely you know that the Amells have a long history of sponsoring young men like yourself, and all of them engaged in academic research. Lord Aristide funded many notable discoveries in the natural and philosophical sciences. And, before him, his father Lord Harworth did the same.”

“I studied as a Chantry brother for years before taking my knighthood.”

“Did you? Yet you opted for knighthood instead. You sound Fereldan. Were you a brother in Denerim?”

“I was, for two years, although I started off as a lay brother at Redcliffe Chantry. At age eighteen I continued my studies in Denerim. When I turned twenty I applied for admittance into the Templar Order.”

“I have heard that the quality of scholarship at Denerim’s Chantry is surprisingly good. Why did you decide to give up a life of scholarship to become a _templar_?” The phrase ‘of all things’ remained unspoken yet clearly implied.

The woman’s question unsettles Cullen, and he wants this line of conversation to end, so he stammers a hasty reply. His jumble of words acknowledge the woman’s views while obscuring his opinions on the matter. Always, it is a waste of time to explain a templar’s selfless work. The moment the woman pauses to sip her wine, Cullen excuses himself.  “Maker watch over you,” he says. He bows his head ever so slightly.

While walking through the crowded room, he looks for Hawke even though he is certain she is not here. After making his way to the far side of the library, he entertains himself with a book of classic Orlesian poetry. Standing by himself in an alcove like a scholar surrounded by his books, Hightown’s nobility chooses not to bother him. 

After paging halfway through the leather bound volume, he hears Hawke call out his name.

“There you are! I’m so glad you came.” Hawke approaches him attired in a voluminous full-length gown.  The dress fits as tight as a second skin around her torso and flares out at her hips as an upside-down tulip in a riot of rich silk. Intricate lace fans out across her bosom. The pale flesh of her knee peeks out where a fold in her skirt is cut high. 

Another man is glued to her side. Kynon. Seneschal Bran’s son. “And this is…?” Kynon says as if he expects not to care.

Hawke cuts Cullen off before he can answer. “My friend Cullen.”

“And you are a Chantry brother?” 

“I am Kirkwall’s Knight Captain.”

“Oh, a _templar_.” The disdain in Kynon’s voice is equally as pronounced as the contempt that consistently colors his father’s words. “Correct me if I am wrong,” Kynon says as he places his arm on Hawke’s shoulder. “The Amell family has a long history of patronage to the Templars. When your grandfather, Lord Aristide, was a small boy, was it not a third of the Kirkwall’s templars who received their food and equipment through an endowment the Amells funded and managed for the Chantry?”

“So I have been told,” Hawke shrugs. She steps forward and reaches out for Cullen’s hands. 

Her grasp is so warm and firm that Cullen unintentionally gasps.

Kynon laughs as he glances away.

Hawke ignores the seneschal’s son as she holds Cullen’s hands in her own. She squeezes his fingers while smiling and looking him straight in the eye. “I’m glad you were able to come here this evening,” she says. She gives his hands a final squeeze before letting go. A sudden emptiness opens up with the loss of her touch, but then she fills that hollow space by stepping closer. 

“It seems our Marian keeps a colorful collection of friends,” Kynon says. “Even mercenaries and elves. Can you believe it?”

“And what’s wrong with the company I keep?” Hawke asks.

“Nothing wrong with it at all.” Kynon toys with his empty wine glass before setting it aside. “No doubt your memories of life in _Ferelden_ makes you long for adventure.” The man said ‘Ferelden’ using the same tone Kirkwallers use when speaking of the remote steppes in the Anderfels, tribal nomads in Par Vollen, and godless wanders in the forests of Rivain. 

Kynon eyes Hawke the way a man with means examines goods in a warehouse. He squeezes Hawke’s shoulder as he fixes his gaze on Cullen. “Have you spread Andraste’s word to people in remote places?”

“Remote places?” Cullen feels stunned. “No. I was stationed in Ferelden’s Circle at Kinloch Hold. Before that, I trained in Denerim.” 

“So, you are Fereldan. I should have known.” Kynon all but sneers.

Hawke cuts in. “Ser Cullen, would you like a tour of my family’s manor?” She leans into Cullen’s arm.

“I— certainly.” Cullen hopes Kynon chooses not to follow.

She takes his hand and pulls him through the crowd, out of the library, through the main parlor, and down a well lit hall. Ducking around busy servers, she makes a sharp turn into what is certainly a formal dining room, but the room is set up as a staging area for staff who prepare trays of food and drinks that they will bring to the guests. Hawke snatches a bottle of wine from a side table. Next, she pulls Cullen through the bustling kitchen and past the larder, and then out the servants door, into Hightown’s crisp night air. 

“Where are we going?” Cullen asks.

“You’ll see,” she says, her voice lilting with mischief. She squeezes his hand and hurries him down the alley that is certainly used by the servants. 

She stops at a gate and unlocks it. “We own all of this,” she says. 

Beyond the open gate, moonlight reveals a formal garden with a vegetable patch right near the gate. Hawke pulls a handful of snap peas from a vine and offers him one. The peas taste sweet and crisp in his mouth. She offers him another, this time holding the pod to his lips while waiting for him to bite. For a moment, her finger tips brush against his mouth. He swallows, aware of every sensation thrumming and buzzing within his body. 

He is afraid to touch her with his hands. Instead, he gazes at her, drinking all of her in with his eyes. If she would just brush against his lips once more. If she would, he would certainly lose himself to her affections. Although he shouldn’t. Indeed, one brief kiss would sate his needs. Just one kiss followed by the fleeting moment of her breath heating the side of his face, and nothing more. 

And damn himself. By the will of the Maker, he should summon some strength. Hawke is a mage of all things. A mage. And he shouldn’t be here. Not with her. Not like this. Not alone. Yet, he waits to see what she might do next. They stand so close they are almost touching.

All of this should feel wrong yet he looks into her eyes, waiting for her to reach up and kiss him. This is different. Hawke is a Hightown lady and not a mage in the Circle, and while he is a Circle templar, here in her family’s garden he is just another man. 

Sweet Maker, a templar Knight Captain and one of Kirkwall’s wealthy and eligible? People in this city will certainly talk. No doubt those who saw them together are already gossiping. Yet, never once has he heard the nobility mention Hawke’s magic. Are they unaware that she is a mage? If they do not know, in their eyes he and Hawke are no different from any other templar knight being courted by someone who is already wealthy and titled. He has protected her secret this far. No one else needs to know what she is. And it is better for her to choose someone like him than a useless fool like Kynon. Cullen knows how to handle anything that might endanger a mage. He understands what people like her can do. He’s not afraid.

When she leans in to kiss him, every fiber in his body blazes.

The warmth of her weight pressing to his chest, the touch of her hand on his cheek. He returns her kiss with all the hunger he didn’t know he had inside him.

The forbidden is not what seduces him, but the strength that he feels when he is with her. He pulls her into his arms, holding her against his body like a shield. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Cullen and Hawke sneak out from the party in her family's mansion and into a private garden, they enjoy each other and a bottle of wine. (Occurs in 9:32, after Act 1 but before Act 2) -- NSFW

**CHAPTER 5**

In the moonlight the riotous tulip colors of Hawke’s dress ripen into early autumn fruit. Pink and burgundy deepen into russets and sepias, outlined with splashes of walnut ink. This woman is beautiful, smiling open-mouthed and carefree, almost as if she is about to laugh. 

“Don’t drop me!” She grips his arms above his wrists and lets her entire body fall back.

Cullen digs his heels while clutching her forearms, keeping her braced as gravity pulls at her weight. By the strength in his arms, Hawke appears to recline on the night air, her head tossed back as she looks up at the moon. She sways her shoulders, creating a pendular force that Cullen is forced to offset. He keeps a solid stance, feet fixed and rooted. He will be the counterbalancing force that keeps her afloat. 

The smile on his face is contagious. Hawke looks up at him and laughs her joy. When Cullen can no longer bear the distance between them, he hauls her upright, drawing close the one form of magic the Maker has always blessed. 

He thinks of repeating their prior kiss. Instead, Cullen recites a line of the Chant. “Come to me, child, and I shall embrace you. In my arms lies Eternity.” Andraste 14:11, lines three and four. He holds Hawke’s arms, steadying her as she regains her balance, but once she stands on her own he hugs her tightly to his chest. 

Ah, the blessed warmth of her weight pressing against him. His hands map the curve of her back as he inhales the floral scent in her hair. She’s nearly as tall as him, but far more narrow. The point of her chin rests just above his collar bone as he squeezes her tightly. Her body fits perfectly in his embrace. 

Giddy, he whispers in her ear, “My Creator, judge me whole: Find me well within Your grace.” Transfigurations 12:4, lines one and two.

Hawke wriggles against him and looks up into his eyes. “When you served as a brother before joining the templars, did you stand outside through sun and rain, speaking as a chanter?”

The moonlight makes her mischievous grin far more wicked as she smiles up at him.

“Touch me with fire that I be cleansed,” he recites. Transfigurations 12:4, line three. 

Hawke plants her hands on his shoulders and stands high on her toes. She rubs the tip of her nose against his. “And?” 

“Tell me I have sung to Your approval.” Transfigurations 12:4, line four. He whispers those words not more than an inch from her lips. 

It seems she is about to kiss him but only a ghost of a touch brushes against his parted lips. Instead, she says, “Too bad you never served as a chanter in Lothering.”

“O Maker, hear me cry: Seat me by Your side in death.” Transfigurations 12:5, lines one and two.

“Although,” she continues, “if you served as a chanter in Lothering and if I had known you then, I doubt that you, as a brother of the faith, would have allowed anything like this.” Hawke’s lips brush against his, teasing him with a hint of a kiss not given. 

But he already knows how her kisses taste. As much as he wants to feel the press of his lips against hers, he refrains. He will wait until she freely kisses him again. And so he recites, “Make me one within Your glory, And let the world once more see Your favor.” Transfigurations 12:5, lines three and four.

“On the other hand,” Hawke cocks her head to one side, “had you served as a templar in Lothering’s chantry, I wonder if we would have done what we feel free to do here.”

He wonders for a moment. He had never visited Lothering back when the village still stood, although he imagines that if he had known her then, they would have devised ways to safely meet. Sneaking into haylofts, he thinks. “For You are the fire at the heart of the world, And comfort is only Yours to give.” Transfigurations 12:6, lines one and two, end of verse.

This time her lips meet his with a slow, satisfying kiss, faultless through the length of this prolonged moment, but when she pulls away Cullen wants more than what has been given.

“O Maker, hear me cry,” he skips back to the first line of Transfigurations verse twelve as his lips brush against hers. “Guide me through the blackest nights.” Transfigurations 12:1 line two.

As he nibbles on her lower lip her weight dissolves into him, falling against the entire length of his body. An electric spark runs from the tip of his tongue down through his core to the base of his cock. He wants to bed her here and now, and Maker grant him this one request every night hence. Let him make love to her nightly and then rest soundly in her embrace. Cullen couldn’t care less if a Chantry mother ever sanctifies their union. In the Maker’s eyes it will always be known that here with Hawke he has found joy.

Her hair is silk between his fingers. The heel of his hand fits perfectly in the indent of her spine at the small of her back. Even through the hazy warmth of wine running through his blood, the chill of the night air nips wherever his skin is exposed. The ridge of his ear. The back of his neck. 

He rubs his face against her and imagines the searing heat of her nakedness against his, both of them moving in sync, stoking a fire that consumes upon release. And then the lazy tangle of limbs. The pillowy post-orgasm peace, preceding the serenity of safe dreams as a familiar face nuzzles against his neck, softly snoring little huffs of breath against his chin. 

Cullen presses his forehead against hers. “Make me to rest in the warmest places.” Transfigurations 12:1, line four. He wonders if she’ll let him undress her here in the garden, let him peel back the ripe russet bodice that clings to her torso like a second skin. 

Her cheeks puffed, she bites down on her lower lip as if holding back an uproarious laugh. Her face softens when her fingertips stroke the side of his face. This act of tenderness reminds him of the Chantry sisters who cared for him when he was a boy. “You skipped the third line — ‘ _Steel my heart against the temptations of the wicked_.’” Cullen leans into her touch. 

On that first day he fought beside Hawke he knew wickedness would never take root in her heart. No matter what others might think of him, only the Maker held final authority to judge his actions as sinful or not. Just as brother Sebastian often says, all the Maker wants for us is the knowledge of joy, not fear. Here, holding Hawke in his arms, Cullen knows the same joy the Maker shares with his bride and there is no sin in joy for the sake of joy. 

He covers her lips with his and begins a languid kiss that warms him much like a glass of red wine. He refuses to think about Meredith and what she would do if she upon learning that her second in command is involved with an apostate. But Kirkwall’s laws and social order were upside down and, if any man shares himself with the Lady Hawke, it is best for that man to be like him: a templar who sees truth with unclouded eyes. Someone who knows what it means to love and cherish someone who fights an eternal struggle against the sins of being born a mage. 

Hawke is the one who learned to steel her heart against the temptations of the wicked, and he is here to hold her as her counterbalancing force.

All those months of doubt he had felt regarding his feelings for Hawke lifted. That doubt had been born from fear and the preemptive sting of anticipated rejection.

But here he is, a welcomed guest in Hawke’s house. 

And he knows how it feels to hold her, to taste her, to run his fingers through her hair, to breathe the same breath she breathes as her hip unapologetically presses into his groin. He knows the shape of her hip with absolute certainty as he runs his hand down the side of her dress. If Cullen could stop time he would choose to elongate this moment into all of eternity.

Hawke is the one who eventually pulls away. She reaches down for where she had left their bottle of wine. Then she takes Cullen’s hand and leads him to a spiraling wrought iron staircase. He follows after her, up to a wide balcony running along the backside of the mansion, overlooking the garden below.

They sit side by side on a bench as Hawke uncorks the bottle. She takes a swig before passing the wine to him. He drinks greedily as she wraps her arms around his midsection and lolls her head against his shoulder. How perfect his life would be if every night went like this.

“Do you remember my brother?” Hawke asks.

He did. He met her brother at the same time he first met her. He remembered how protective her brother had been around her, how he often looked distracted by some annoyance, and how his attention became like an arrow trained on its target whenever templar matters were mentioned.

“I heard about what happened to him in the Deep Roads,” Cullen replies as he squeezes Hawke’s shoulder. “I’m very sorry.” 

“My parents named him after a templar. Maurevar Carver. That man served at the Gallows before I was born. From what I’ve heard from Ser Thrask, the Circle was very different back then. More lenient and far more concerned about balancing Kirkwall’s needs with the needs of mages and templars.”

“Kirkwall can no longer afford the level of leniency allowed back then.”

“But there are still templars who judge mages as individuals rather than painting us all with the same brush.”

“Hawke…” He makes a shushing sound in her hair while he rocks her in his arms. “Your situation was different. You help Kirkwall and you aid the Order. Had the templars known—”

“Thrask knew. So did you.”

“No matter what the Knight Commander thinks, I will never forget what you have done for the Order.” 

Cullen tips the bottle of wine to his lips and gulps down a mouthful, fueling the fire that burns in his belly. Hawke shimmies into his lap, turning herself so she straddles him, her legs wrapping around his waist. She kisses him with such a suddenness that Cullen no longer bothers to think how their actions might be construed. Instead, he willingly responds, unable to imagine anything more natural than this woman’s limbs draped around him. He returns her kiss with desperate affection. He thinks of lying back on the bench so he can feel the bliss of Hawke’s weight pressing down on his body.

When she sucks on his tongue, Cullen’s cock hardens. He’s not ashamed to rub against her, knowing that their clothing does nothing to conceal the firmness of his erection. He is nothing like the templars who cause problems, nothing like the men who demand sex from those who cannot refuse. Cullen’s fingertips dig into the layers of heavy silk covering Hawke’s hips. Their breath shudders with each grind, with each desirous kiss, him imagining the fullness of her scent coating his tongue once he gains the chance to kiss between her legs. The thought of Hawke’s body pulling as tight as a bow string makes Cullen shiver.

They share this pleasure freely. Either could stop. Hawke could tell him to leave and he would, even though he hopes such words will never be spoken. The only shame he feels is the niggling fear he might blurt out how he’s in love with her. Hawke might laugh. He isn’t certain they know each other well enough for such honest confessions.

Instead, he catches his breath as his fingers comb back loose strands of hair from Hawke’s face. 

“Stay the night with me,” she says. 

Sweet Maker, yes.

She takes his hand, moving it to cup her breast. Her heat burns through the tight-fitting fabric of her bodice. Rather than answer with a spoken word, he places a kiss where the lace and silk meet, just where the curve of her breast begins.

“Stay with me until morning,” she says.

Cullen looks into Hawke’s eyes as he squeezes her ripe apple-round breast until she gasps. He catches her breath with an open kiss, his tongue darting against hers expectantly.

There is no other woman he wants. No one else, just Hawe, and, Maker, let him wake each morning in this woman’s warm embrace. Let him wake cocooned in sheets perfumed with her scent. Let them make slow sleepy love when dawn’s pale light begins to bathe the city. From the end of his daily duties until morning, let him seek refuge in her family’s garden and find peace in her bed. 

Hawke marks a line of kisses along his jaw before sucking on his earlobe and he moans instantaneously. 

Such a satisfied look she gives him as she reaches for whatever remains in that bottle of wine. She takes the last sip. When her lips meet his again, their kiss tastes of something sweet set on fire.Shifting her weight in his lap, she bunches the voluminous skirt of her dress around her waist. Cullen hardly needs coaxing before he places his hand on the inside of her naked thigh. They stare at each other, open mouthed, breathing shallowly, as his fingers inch toward the impossible heat behind the dampness of her cotton undergarments.

The moment he touches her they gasp in unison and then, all at once, she pulls away.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” she says as she gets up from his lap.

Hawke takes Cullen’s hand. He stands, weak kneed and warmly drunk. He clumsily stumbles after her, laughing at himself because all of his blood has rushed to his cock. He follows her along the length of the balcony, past the soft lights of hanging glow lamps, into a private alcove shielded by a flower-covered trellis. The air around them hangs thick with blossoming jasmine, its richness soaks through their clothes, bathing their skin. Hawke leans back against a wall, pulling himself into her. Every kiss he plants on her skin tastes of a heady sweetness. Sweet is her bottom lip, the side of her chin, her cheekbone’s prominent ridge. All the while she takes his hand and homes it toward the exposed flesh of her thigh. Her skirt makes slippery sounds as Hawke bunches the fabric up around her hips. 

Even though he knows he will spend the night making love with Hawke, he thinks of how he could sink to his knees, pulling her down with him so he can rest his head in her lap and sleep a full night in peace.

The muscles in her leg strain against his touch. Her hand presses on his fingertips, digging them into the soft skin of her inner thigh. When she hisses, Cullen sucks in his breath in sympathy. 

The moment he rubs his hand against the thin fabric covering her sex, a moan loosens in her throat. He catches the last sound of that moan with a kiss. Hawke’s hands move beneath her skirt as she unfastens a tie on her underwear and wriggles the cloth down her legs and off, over her shoes. They gasp the same puff of air the moment his fingers slip into the slickness between her legs. 

For the duration of one deeply drawn breath, Hawke looks into his eyes as he slowly runs the length of his index finger against her swelling clitoris. He can feel time stop the moment his hand loses contact with her. He touches her again, this time with a firm, circular press, and she kisses him with impatient fury, thrusting her weight into his hand, rocking against him like a boat in the harbor knocking into its mooring. Cullen swallows each of her needy moans as his tongue presses into her mouth. It isn’t long before she comes. He feels soaked in the richness of her scent and the mingling sweetness of jasmine. 

She has hardly caught her breath when she braces her back against the wall and hitches her right leg above his hip, inviting him to push his fingers inside her. He takes her leg into the crook of his arm, and his free hand meanders along the inside of her thigh, massaging ropey muscles as she sighs.

Just as his fingers slide against her sex, he slows his ministrations to a solemn pace. There is no sin in the way his first two fingers surround her clitoris while gliding between her swollen lips. The Maker made them as they are, every fiber of their bodies designed to feel pleasure. He lays his forehead against hers just before he dares to press the tips of those first two fingers inside of her. She shudders out a moan as her muscles clench and yield. Cullen holds his breath as he slides in deeper, but his breath explodes in a rush when her strong fingers rub the outline of his erection through the layers of fabric still covering his crotch. With her perfect thigh pressed against his side, they move in a staccato rhythm timed by their hitching breath. As she rides against his hand he imagines himself naked, his cock inside her. Her kisses are quick and fierce, far too frenzied for Cullen to stop and free himself from the confines of the clothing that lay between him and Hawke’s hand. Unlike all of his nights alone, he’s already close. Every muscle in his abdomen clenches with each stroke of her hand. He gulps for air, holding back just a little longer while Hawke urgently grinds against his hand. 

Beneath the balcony, a door bangs open. Light and raucous voices flood into the garden. Despite the seclusion afforded by the alcove and the trellis draped in jasmine, Cullen pulls himself away from Hawke. Her skirt drops back around her legs.

She takes his hand and presses the fingers that had just been inside of her to his lips. 

Oh, Maker, the taste of her! Salt of the earth on his tongue. 

The people below in the garden shout out the words to a popular song as Hawke pulls him forward, following the length of the balcony to a door that takes them back into the estate. They enter a dark hall and slip into a room lit only by logs glowing in a fireplace. In the low, warm light, Cullen’s gaze dances from a desk to a wardrobe to a canopied bed. A familiar jacket has been tossed over the back of an upholstered chair. This is Hawke’s bedroom. He knows this before she tells him.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a devout templar who takes Andraste's sacred verses to heart, oral sex is a religious experience.

**CHAPTER 6**

 

Hawke’s bedroom is nearly as large as the room in Kinloch Hold that Cullen had shared with five other men. In the Gallows, he has a room to himself, but even that small room is hardly the size of the space occupied by Hawke’s massive canopied bed. Covered with a quilted blanket, the bed’s mattress looks thick and luxurious. He wants to throw his body onto it and have Hawke roll in his arms, the firelight flickering as they laze together. Both of them feeling so comfortable neither needs to speak. A silence that engenders peace. A stilling of time.

With her hand at his elbow, she leads him around the room, showing him books she is certain he will enjoy. She points out objects of art that survived through the years that slavers held possession of her family’s estate. She points to an oil painting of a pastoral scene of rolling hills and farm land, somewhere further east in the Marches.

“The day we moved in, my mother walked from room to room and just by the look on her face I knew how much had been stolen versus how much remained unchanged. Some rooms made Mother gasp and then she’d say, ‘I can’t believe it! This is exactly as I remember it!’ To me, her excitement sounded strange because the thick layers of dust made everything appear like a picture of a hazy memory captured in grey tones of paint.”

As she talks, Cullen stumbles beside her, wine-warmed blood elongating each of his movements and gestures. His arm finds its way around her waist as hesteals kisses from her whenever he can, each kiss tasting of wine and jasmine and snap peas from the garden. And also of Hawke. Warm and womanly, with a concealed hint of that quicksilver slipperiness of lyrium. When his tongue touches hers just right, he can feel his senses sing a familiar song. That soothing heat of the Maker’s fire. 

And nothing from the physical world nor from the spirit-filled planes beyond could frighten him. Not when the holiest fire sang in his blood. Not when with Hawke.

Just looking in her eyes, Cullen knew that if he held her as he slept, she would guard him from harm. She would shoo away the nightmares that plagued him five to six nights of the week. On the seventh night, one of Meredith’s assistants handed out weekly rations to every templar. Everyone slept soundly that night, an entire army cut off from the world of dreams.

The moment he feels Hawke begin to pull away, he clings to her, his life dependent on everything she has to give. When she finally slips from his arms, his heart pounds in his chest.

She tugs on his overcoat’s narrow lapel. “Aren’t you warm? Let me take this from you.”

Beads of sweat itch along his hairline. 

“Cullen, you look flushed.” Hawke cups the side of his face, her fingertips hot enough to singe a perfect likeness of her image into his mind.

He closes his eyes. Everything before him remains visible but the edges give off a shimmering haze. He takes one of Hawke’s hands and presses his lips to the inside of her wrist. Circles the tip of his tongue over the point where her pulse is strongest.

When he opens his eyes, Hawke gives him a look that is so openly flirtatious, Cullen has absolutely no doubt which pilgrimage he should take. He runs a quick line of kisses up the length of her arm.When he reaches his first destination, he sucks on her exposed neck. Her body loses its tautness as she lets out an open mouthed moan. Cullen stoops down to place a firm kiss on the tightly tailored fabric covering her breasts. Then another, lower, centered on her stomach. He drops to one knee and fumbles through her layers of fabric, bunching it up against her sides until it exaggerates the fullness of her hips almost to the point of obscenity. They had left her underwear outside on the balcony, leaving her beautifully bear once her hips and legs are fully revealed from behind all those layers of colored silk. Cullen kneels before her, his fingers parting the dark curls that hid this pilgrim’s most sacred destination. That dark pink pearl, swollen and hot against his tongue. He leaves one lingering kiss. Then he speaks a brief benediction before pulling back and gazing up at her face.

Her expression reads thoroughly quizzical. 

Although he has no doubt that Hawke has engaged in sexual pleasures before him, she seems too pure to have bedded a templar. Too honest, even for an apostate. The wanton need that she displayed out in the garden had been left beneath those drooping blossoms of jasmine, discarded much like her missing undergarment. 

Now she chewed innocently on her bottom lip, apparently surprised to see an avowed knight kneeling between her naked legs, worshipping her in an act of holy pleasure. 

But this is no game played in the circle for favors or for control. Unlike most of his brethren, Cullen has never spoken a false promise, never lied, never used his position to take advantage of another.

“I would have no one but you,” he says.

He watches the muscles in her face play out a concert of movements as he reads her unspoken reply. 

“I mean it.”

And then a smile tickles her lips.

“I swear it. If you will have me, I’ll vow myself to you.”

“You’re drunk,” she says, but her lopsided grin and warm eyes counteract her rebuffing response. She plays with his shortly cropped curls, her hand cupping his hair as if stroking the outer edge of a narrow halo.

“I’m not drunk!”

She laughs at him, endearing and joyous.

“Well, alright, I _am_ drunk _,_ but I would swear it anyway! I would have sworn it yesterday. I promise I’ll swear it again in the morning.”

Her fingertips brush the top of his ear and travel along his jaw before settling on his lips.  

“I would make this vow because I trust you. I’ve trusted you since the day we met. Hawke, will you have me? Not just tonight, but tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.” 

A broad smile blooms across her face before turning into a mischievous grin. She makes a playful attempt to tousle his short hair.

“Will you?”

“Ask me in the morning.” 

“I will.” 

He rubs his face against her thigh, inhaling a scent that already feels familiar. Every word he said was true whether drunk or sober, but he could wait until the morning to repeat the truth and receive her word. 

As much as he wanted to bed her, mostly he wanted his own place on her shoulder. He wanted to lay his head against her while listening to the peaceful rhythm of her breath as she fell asleep. This had less to do with loneliness than it did with accuracy. Hawke shot through life with the purpose of a marksman’s arrow. Both he and her knew what lurked in the parallel lands fed by dreams. To sleep by her side was a declaration of trust as much as an act of self-preservation. He knew his own faults and flaws, and how Hawke fit beside him, even though he had been afraid to admit this during those first few months when getting to know her. Most of all, he felt right calling her his friend. That rightness was as solid as her stance, feet planted on either side of his knees. He runs his hands up her legs, over firm muscles, up to her hips, to her backside. He leaves a kiss on the inside of her thigh before looking up and reciting a line of the Chant.

“My hearth is yours, my bread is yours, my life is yours.”

Such serenity in her face, her slightly parted lips, her large hooded eyes gazing down at him. He presses his mouth against her folds, leaving one long kiss after another until her pelvis tilts and her fingers dig into his shoulders. Pressing forward, he laps along the path to her entrance, baptizing himself in her glorious wetness. 

Hawke is the second lover Cullen has ever known. The first had been his secret in Ferelden, although it was no secret that he and his first were fucking. Everyone who saw them knew as they snuck off behind a bookcase, just as the circle’s library closed. Their private sounds mixed with the sounds of others as favors were exchanged, deals struck, needs met, but not for Cullen. Beyond him and Neria, the woman he met with, no one knew she was his pledged lover, that he had sworn himself to her, sworn himself in the eyes of the Maker as her honest partner. For years they hid plainly, another set of silhouetted limbs in a night-darkened painting of libertines.

The Chantry sisters and mothers claim to have banned the profane verses of the Chant. When Cullen turned fifteen, he met a group of sisters who told him otherwise. There were verses that select members of the Templar Order secretly kept alive. Such a serenity those sisters possessed, and Cullen memorized every word of Andraste’s secret canticles long before he took his vows as a templar, and long before he received grace through Her mortal blessings.

The winds of the Waking Sea animate Hawke as she sways. The arch undercutting her ribcage stands out, muscles of her abdomen constricting in stark relief. He needs to support her with the strength of his arms, holding her upright as his tongue spells out the second to last word of a canticle, blessing her firm clitoris just at the moment she comes. 

She pushes his face away as he finishes inscribing the last word. 

Laughing and trembling, she begs him to stop. 

Her body melts into his lap, arms around his neck. She bestows on him a kiss so slow and saintly all senses of being transcend mortal confines. He knows her as he knows himself, an eternal knowing unblemished by sins passed down through generations until entering her blood. 

“We have got to get rid of this ridiculous skirt.” Hawke makes a face as she pinches the crumpled fabric. 

Cullen feels a bit more drunk than merely tipsy as he stumbles upward, bringing them both to their feet so he can help her out of her dress.

“Are you hungry?” she asks.

“Very hungry.” He bites at her neck.

She wiggles out from his arms. “I meant hungry for something to eat. Cheese and cured meat? A sandwich? Wine?”

Cullen rubs his face with his hand and feels foolish. Heat prickles across his cheeks and down his neck. “I’m— Sure, I wouldn’t mind having something. Anything. Whatever you want.” He takes a deep breath, suddenly worried that he’s coming on too strong and moving too fast. Rather than look at her, he stares at his feet.

She is the one who breaks the awkward silence when she takes hold of his hand and rubs the pad of her thumb against his knuckles. She makes a small laugh that sounds like the clinking of glasses. Her chin high and lips forward in a defiant pout, she pushes him backward, sending him sprawling onto her bed. She straddles him, while wearing a conquerer’s proud smile.

“Did we not work up enough of an appetite for you when we were outside?” Her hands tug at the wide sash wrapping around his overcoat, encircling his waist. He helps her. Shows her how the ends are tucked. Sitting up, he removes his overcoat. He moves her hands to the ties on his wide cummerbund. Lets her work open the hidden buttons on his collared jacket. His crimson tabard pulls over his head along with his saffron tunic. Down to his linens, he lets her hands linger on his naked forearms. She kisses his neck as her fingers work under his thin, close fitting undershirt, lifting it up to his chest until he wriggles out of it. All of her heavy fabric drapes over him as she straddles his legs. She licks a line down his abdomen, his skin taut as a drum, her layers of silk rustling as she shimmies down his body. He grips the blanket beneath them as her lips untie the drawstring on his smalls. 

He lifts his hips, letting her shimmy his underwear down. He gasps as she takes him with a ferocious hunger. That relentless rhythm of her hand and tongue. All of it ending too quickly. He shouts her name. Maker’s breath. He calls out her name again and this time she elbows her way up his body to meet his lips. Her kiss is thick with him and his musky scent. He wants to do the same for her but before he can undo the tight rows of buttons on the back of her bodice and remove those silken ruffles strung over flexible hoops, she pushes herself back, off the bed, and stands. She walks around, unknotting the ties that hold back the canopy curtains around her bed. He is lost in darkness until she slips a small glow lamp next to a pillow.

“Are you coming back in here?” He pokes his face between two of the curtains. 

“I’ll be right back with wine and sandwiches.”

Before he can stop her, she leaves.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen fails to avoid obnoxious Hightowners while waiting for Hawke to return to him in her bed.

**CHAPTER 7**

Alone, Cullen lies naked in Hawke's bed, clothing bunched in a pile near his feet. The small glow lamp Hawke left on a pillow casts a warm light inside the cocoon of the bed's canopy curtains. Cullen slips his hand over the quilt beneath him. He closes his eyes and imagines Hawke lying next to him, the weight of her limbs on his body, the heat of her breath against his face. In her absence, he rubs his cheek against a pillow. He imagines them scooting up to sit and drinking wine straight from the bottle and, when he kisses her, he will taste the same tannins and fruity sweetness on her tongue.

Hawke will return soon enough.

Even if she takes a while, he'll remain within the shelter of her canopied bed. Guests will certainly waylay her with gossip while flaunting their self-presumed worth. She'll be stopped by a throng of ladies who gasp over the news of some high-born son caught sneaking off to sleep with an elf in a Lowtown tenement. Someone will state how anyone with taste would purchase one of the Blooming Rose's hand picked elves. Then another will complain about a loose mabari pissing on cultivated flowers. Next they'll comment on a widow dressed in last year's fashion and whisper of how she has fallen on hard times, a crime marked her appearance in public while wearing a dress with two rows of ruffled lace running down the sides of her bodice.

Such folly occupies Hightown minds, yet it seems doubtful they will laugh at Hawke's dress even though it looks like an upside-down tulip. Between that dress, her shoes, and the way she has her hair styled, Hawke looks nothing like the woman who stops by the Gallows in the afternoon asking for him. Nothing like the woman he meets for drinks at the Hanged Man. The moment she returns he will remove that dress from her body and unpin her hair. He needs to see Hawke naked and sate his hunger for the familiar, for the Fereldan woman he meets in Lowtown.

Cullen reaches out for the small glow lamp, pulling it closer, cupping his palm over its glass dome. The lamp is warm enough to raise sweat on his skin but not hot enough to test his physical tolerance. Nothing like warding of the heat from a fade-torn ball of fire.

He closes his eyes, presses his face into a pillow, and breathes in a trace of Hawke's scent. He imagines her face, her eyes gazing into his, their foreheads close enough to touch. His hand drifts down to his cock. He fingers his foreskin, stroking himself more for comfort than to bring himself to climax.

When he realizes his thoughts have drifted to Neria, he wonders how long he has lain in Hawke's bed imagining the elf's high cheekbones and narrow face, her exotic slenderness looking even more pronounced as her mouth gapes, features elongated in pleasure.

Cullen's stomach contracts at his mind's betrayal. He catches his breath. And then he laughs it off. Oh, how strange.

He has lost count of the number of months that have passed since he last thought of Neria. For so long he has fallen to sleep each night thinking of Hawke.  
  
Maybe none of this is strange at all. Since his last time with Neria, he hasn't lain with another woman. This was nothing but memories of coupling, nothing more. Certainly not an emotional or spiritual betrayal. Only him remembering how it feels to give himself to another. Remembering the ways of pleasure, of worshiping a woman while listening to the holy chant of her breath. Hawke is a strong mage and just like Neria, she holds the strength to reject temptation. This time, unlike his last, he and Hawke will make their relationship work.

Hawke should be back soon, carrying wine, fresh bread, sweet honey, and rich cheese. He thinks of her swaying hips and the sound of her voice. Immediately, his cock is hard in his hand. After a few strokes he stops himself, partly not to spill on her quilt but mostly to wait for her so she can be the one who brings him to climax.  
  
Beyond Hawke's bedchamber, the muffled sounds of music drift up from below. Cullen thinks back to the night he whispered with Hawke as they stood in the dark in that Lowtown apartment that smelled of boiled cabbage. The sounds of her uncle and her brother snoring. Her knee knocking into his leg, followed by that long silence when he thought about going with her to her bed. But he didn't. He knew that he shouldn't. Back then he only wanted Hawke to stay away from the men hunting her. He never thought she would return to Kirkwall even though he thought of her every night. When she came back, cloaked in wealth, he no longer needed to worry. And now he is here in her bed, waiting patiently.

He sweeps his hand beneath a pillow to bunch it under his head but his fingers bump into something solid.

A book. Two books. Their location suggests they will be pornographic, but after he rolls to his stomach and pulls them out, he finds that one is a literary work and the other a popular novel. Bestsellers, both of them. The literary work is a piece of trash penned by an Orlesian socialite who lives in Hightown. _A Death in the Circle_. Five-hundred and sixty pages of slander couched as fiction. After the Chantry panned it as libel, printers couldn't bind copies fast enough. Blasted sensationalism.  
  
The other is Varric Tethras' _Hard in Hightown_ , but unlike the paperbound edition Cullen borrowed from the Gallows' library, Hawke's copy is large, heavy, and leather bound. The pages are printed with rich dark ink and the paper is heavy enough so no imprints of words on the reverse show through. Every dozen pages, it contains a hand illustrated plate. The quality of the book is outstanding. She must have paid a small fortune for it.

Cullen has already read the novel twice but not a rare illustrated edition. He lingers over a hand painted plate depicting city guardsmen battling smugglers inside a dockside warehouse. Painstaking detail brings their faces alive, the bold brazenness of the smugglers versus the guards' determination. A dozen pages further he finds a salacious illustration of a noble lady kissing a Dalish woman as the elf's fingers work the buttons of the lady's bodice. The next plate reveals guardsmen surrounded by the Carta. And next he finds a shady merchant using slight of hand to steal coin from a customer. Cullen flips further and finds a picture of a templar falling under a desire demon's spell. The artist drew the armor wrong. The sword of mercy on the templar's chest plate is missing its flames and the sword in the templar's hand has a jewel encrusted pommel. The templar's sword even has glowing runes etched into its blade. What folly! The templar wears a knight corporal's uniform while carrying a blade that belongs to a prince. The entire image appeals to a sense of fantasy. Cullen chuckles as he leans closer. He attempts to decipher the runic script on the sword. Old Arcanum?

The bedchamber door opens.

He looks over his shoulder, anticipating Hawke's voice. Instead, beyond his seclusion within Hawke's canopied bed, he hears a woman laughing as a man tells her to hurry in. The door clicks shut behind them.

"Oooo! Kynon, you are very naughty!" The woman's accent is unmistakably Orlesian.

Taking care not to make a sound, Cullen pushes himself into a crouch. His wrist joints crack. He freezes. His muscles tense. When the Orlesian begins laughing again he holds his breath and slowly positions himself so he's sitting just behind where two canopy curtains meet.

Peeking through the hair-thin gap Cullen recognizes Seneschal Bran's son but not the woman Kynon has pinned to the wall while burying his face in her bosom. The woman writhes the instant Kynon works his hand inside her skirt.

"Deliciously naughty," the woman growls and then she gasps and lets loose a low moan.

Cullen leans back, pushing himself far from the sight of the unfolding scene. If only he could block out the sound of them as well.

"Oh, Kynon! You are terrible."

"I prefer you think me the opposite of terrible."

"Then show me how far from terrible you truly are."

"Would it be terrible of me to have you in that bed?"

Cullen's balls tightened. Sweet Maker! Not here.

"No, Kynon. Take me here. Now, Kynon. Now!" She moans her words, desperate and breathless and wanting.

When Kynon emits a guttural sound, Cullen prays they remain where they are.

"Please, Kynon. Please!"

The rustling of silk and their duet of heavy breathing precedes a punctuated shout emitted by the Orlesian. Penetration, no doubt, especially when followed by a series of muffled thumps timed with the monosyllabic grunts that mark Kyron's desperate assent.

Cullen grits his teeth. Sweet Maker, can't these two hurry up and return to the party? Listening to these nobles fuck is nearly as annoying as responding to their questions about the Order. At least these two aren't asking anything of him right now.

Cullen tries to remain as still as possible, yet his cock proves to have a will of its own. Wonderful. He should ignore it but he fingers the tip of his cock anyway. Two years have past since the last time he touched himself while listening to the sounds of others. Unlike the Gallows, those in Kinloch Hold had been shameless.

As the Orlesian's moans crescendo into punctuated shouts, Cullen licks the palm of his hand and cups his erection. He sucks in his breath with an almost silent hiss as he imagines Hawke's tongue circling the head of his cock.

The Orlesian woman's unbridled shouts fill Hawke's bedchamber as Kynon pushes her closer to climax. In Cullen's desperation to finish, he grips his erection and imagines Hawke's tight entrance. An accidental gasp escapes his lips. Luckily, the sound of his breath is lost behind the shouts of noisy orgasm on the other side the room. Feeling momentarily unconcerned whether Kynon and the Orlesian hear him, he comes quickly and wipes the mess off against the side of his leg.

If only these idiotic nobles could see the smirk on his face. For all their money and rigidity, Kirkwall's nobility hardly acted different from the members of Ferelden's circle. Back in Ferelden, once the lights went out, almost everyone over the age of fifteen began fucking.

Cullen waits for Kynon and the Orlesian to leave. Instead, they murmur words he cannot clearly hear. Finally clothing rustles and a belt buckles. They must be straightening out their attire.

It seems they will return to the party when the door clicks open.

"Marian!" Kynon says. "This wouldn't be your room?"

What nonsense! Cullen bites into his lower lip.

"Of course it is." Hawke's voice sounds flat.

"Odette, isn't this convenient." Kynon's states.

The Orlesian named Odette laughs.

What luck. Now neither of these two will leave.

Cullen eyes his clothing, heaped at the foot of the bed. If he could transform into a soundless spirit, he would dress. Then he would move like a ghost to stand behind Hawke. With his hands on her hips and lips to her ear, he would say, 'Come with me,' and then she would make an excuse to take leave. The two of them would slip from her manor, out the back, and through an alley. Half way across Hightown they would begin to laugh. He would be himself again as he takes her hand and they would saunter down that long stairway, all the way to the Hanged Man. There, they would find her friends and all of them would laugh at the ridiculousness of this formal party. After a drink, Cullen would rent a private room and the moment the door shuts behind them, he rid Hawke of that preposterous dress. The rest of the night would be spent making love and quietly talking. When morning finally catches up with them, they would realize they have forgotten to sleep.

"Odette," he hears Kynon say, "Let me introduce you to our host."

"Oh, please," the Orlesian coos.

"Lady Marian Hawke of Kirkwall's esteemed Amell family, may I introduce Odette Bouchard."

Blighted flames! Bouchard? Odette Bouchard? What blasted luck. Cullen scowls at her trashy tome sitting on the bed next to _Hard in Hightown_. That woman's entire career has been built on defaming the templars with her sleaze.

"And, Marian, you've brought us refreshments," Kynon announces. "Would you look at this. A selection of fine cheese, an Antivan Jacovian red, and a Starkhaven rosé. You know, this Antivan is outstanding. My father purchased six cases of it. Although the 9:25 is much better. It's almost impossible to find on the market but I will bring you a few bottles from my family's cellar."

"Ah, yes, the 9:25 Jacovian is heavenly." Odette's accent is even thicker than before. "You must try it, Lady Marian."

"Until then, let us uncork that 9:28." Kynon speaks his words with the certainty of a guest who has no intent of leaving.

Cullen's pulse pounds through the side of his neck. The muscles in his shoulders knot. His face prickles with heat. If only he could stand on the other side of the room with his arms around Hawke he would feel sane.

He cups his hands over his nose and mouth. He takes three measured breaths. Beyond the bed's canopy curtains, he hears a cork pop. Wine tinkles into a glass, the sound of it suddenly offensive. Cullen leans forward, reaching for his tunic.

"Shouldn't we pour a fourth glass for Lady Marian's friend," Odette announces.

Cullen freezes.

"Which friend?" Kynon asks. "Is our private party about to grow?"

"Maybe some other time—" Hawke begins to say.

"Let me take a glass to her Chantryman," Odette interrupts.

"Oh, yes, Marian's friend from the Chantry," Kynon booms. "Did he enjoy the tour of your manor?"

"Speaking of Ser Cullen," Hawke says, "I should find him. Why don't we step out—"

"Did you misplace him in your bed?"

Oh fuck.

Cullen tosses his tunic over his head and struggles his arms through the sleeves. He pulls the cloth down the length of his body just as one of the curtains is yanked back.

Odette plops her backside on the bed. Silk frills flounce as she settles in.

She holds out a glass of wine. "You must be the Chantryman Kynon met earlier."

"Oh, Marian!" Kynon exclaims. "You're sleeping with the Chantry brother your family sponsors? Scandalous!"

Cullen squares his shoulders. "I am not an avowed brother. I am Kirkwall's Knight Captain."

"And you left your overcoat and boots on the floor." Odette shrugs. "You should have joined us earlier."

Across the room, Hawke wears a pained expression. Her face appears as if viewed in reflection through a cracked mirror. Cullen cannot tell if she is looking at him or at some point in the distance far behind him. After he gulps his wine, her gaze shifts elsewhere, making him feel as if he is not in her bed.

Cullen places his glass on a bedside table and reaches for his trousers.

After a life of Chantry orphanages and templar barracks, his exposed legs and bare feet fail to shame him, but the opulence of the Amell estate and the lavishly dressed nobility leave him uncomfortable. The honesty of his skin feels out of place.

Hawke says nothing as she nibbles on a piece of cheese. Kynon jabbers at Hawke while leaning against the wall as if he owns everything in this room. Odette alternates between sipping her wine and nodding in response to Kynon's words. Despite the alcohol flush on her cheeks, when her eyes shift to Cullen she watches him like a matron waiting for a child to misbehave.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, among buildings that squat beneath clouds of refinery smoke, a din of rough voices speak in accents foreign to Kirkwall but familiar to Cullen's ears. Traders and travelers from beyond the Marches mingle with Fereldans as they drink ale in the Hanged Man. When Cullen dresses in common Fereldan clothes, he fits right in. Men even nod to him when he arrives. Right now, how many of Hawke's friends sit in Varric's private room, tossing their coin on the table after a new hand of wicked grace is dealt? Isabela bluffs with a cloying smile as she gazes over the top of her cards. Aveline frowns while tapping the edge of a silver coin against the table. Fenris narrows his eyes and leans forward while pressing the first knuckle of his fist into his lower lip.

Cullen does not wonder why Hawke's friends haven't come to this affair. Even he would have preferred to meet in Lowtown for ale and a game of cards. Sitting next to Hawke, he would wait for that moment when both of them grow silent as her leg brushes against his. After a bad deal, he'll fold and toss his unlucky cards to the table. Unlike prior evenings, this would be the night he works up his nerve to put his arm around Hawke. He'd wait for her to lean toward him. Perhaps her weight will shift into his lap as he presses his face into her neck. Coins clink across the table when Aveline shouts in victory, her arms held high before sweeping her winnings toward her. Varric shuffles the deck and deals another hand. With no more coin to spare, Cullen is forced to play his next hand with Hawke, him tapping the card he thinks she should discard, her shushing him into silence. No matter who wins that hand, he'll leave a kiss behind her ear. If only he and Hawke were anywhere but here at this party in Hightown.

He looks at Hawke as she spoons a dab of honey onto a piece of bread. Kynon and Odette chatter about Hightown gossip as they drink their wine. Cullen ignores them and walks barefoot to where the rest of his clothing lay. He puts all of it on, even his long Chantry overcoat and sash.

"But it's still early. You cannot leave yet," Odette says to him.

Cullen glances at Hawke and swears she flashes him a silent plea. That is when he knows he cannot leave her with Seneschal Bran's twit of a son. Kynon knows nothing about the danger he flirts with. Hawke is and will always be a mage. Neither money nor wishful thinking will ever change that fact.

Kynon leans against the wall, his outstretched arm just behind Hawke's shoulder. "Marian, tell us how you managed to clear out a criminal ring who plagued the docks for years."

This entire charade is ridiculous. Cullen pulls himself to his full height and walks over to Hawke.

"She cleared them out using the same methods the city guard uses. All it takes is an ear for information and a sharp blade." Cullen looks Kynon in the eye. "Hawke coordinates with the Guard Captain."

Hawke licks her lips before responding. "The city guard lack the resources to handle the docks on their own. I work with Aveline. We patrol the docks during her off hours and I use my connections for extra manpower."

"Still, it was quite a feat," Kynon says, but not to Hawke. Instead, he stares at Cullen.

"Months of long observations, listening and looking for what failed to add up," Hawke replies.

"You cleared the worst of them out and, just like magic, they are gone," Kynon says.

"Hawke has helped the city guard and the templars." Cullen leans against Hawke's side. She doesn't move away so he slips his arm around her waist and pulls her closer.

He watches how Hawke briefly runs her tongue over her bottom lip. "Both the guard and the templars offered me work," she says. "I squirreled away money for the expedition and to settle old debts."

"But now all of that is done," Cullen says.

"Yes, I manage my share of the Bone Pit and tend to my family's estate."

"Leaving you more free time with your templar?" The purposeful weight Kynon places on the word _templar_ rankles Cullen.

The three of them stand where they are, bound tight in an uncomfortable silence.

Odette's voice rings out with a laugh.

"Boys," Odette says. "Always delightful, aren't they, Marian? Boys being boys, locking horns just to make their point. Shouldn't we open that other bottle of wine?"

"Marian?" Kynon holds out his hand.

"It's on the table." Hawke nods her chin toward the bottle of rosé.

Kynon stands in front of her long enough to make clear that he holds the power to decide when this standoff ends. Finally, the man turns and picks up the corkscrew and the bottle. Cullen pulls Hawke against his chest and kisses her neck while Odette watches them. At first, Hawke's body remains stiff but when he whispers into her ear, her weight settles into him. Cullen kisses along her jaw line and makes a point of catching Odette's eye the moment he cups the underside of Hawke's breast.  
  
Turn and face me, Cullen thinks. He nearly says these words as his lips hover near Hawke's ear. Turn and face me. Wrap your arms around me. Kiss me again the way we kissed early, out in the privacy of your garden.

He sucks on her earlobe until he feels her sigh. Just as she does, he coaxes her to turn in his arms. Her lips meet his.

To the void with the seneschal's prat of a son. Kynon is too proud to announce his engagement to a woman who has let Hightown know she prefers a Fereldan-born templar raised in a Chantry orphanage.

Cullen catches Kynon sneering just before the man turns his back on Cullen and Hawke, and walks toward Odette who holds out her empty wine glass. Good. Let them watch. Odette will certainly tell half of Hightown before sundown tomorrow. Kynon will deny his interest in Hawke to save face. Problem solved.  
  
Cullen touches Hawke's cheek and gazes into her eyes. Finally, he coaxes a smile from her. He brushes the tip of his nose against hers and waits for her to tilt her lips toward his. When she does, he drinks in her kiss. Nothing beyond her matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Sorry for the long delay in updating. Life was tremendously busy over the past few months and what little writing time I had was spent on other deadline-driven writing challenges. Back to updating this now. The promised train-wreck that OP originally asked for in the prompt (remember that prompt?!) finally derails during the next two chapter. Ka-boom!


End file.
